I bought slacks made out of recycled bottles

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t realize it when I bought some new slacks at Target, but the label says the fabric is made of recycled bottles, to the tune of 60%.

I bought the pants because they fit (not always an easy thing to find) and are very comfortable. Part of what seems to lead to that comfort is the material, which is smooth and soft but resilient. I had no idea it had anything to do with recycled bottles, but if they’ve figured out a way to do that, then great.

They certainly weren’t expensive, either.

And lo and behold, here’s how it’s done:

Unifi, based in Greensboro, North Carolina, produces 300 million pounds of polyester and nylon yarn annually.

“As a manufacturer, we asked ourselves what we could do to be more innovative and a socially responsible company,” said Hertwig.

Repreve was the answer. It’s the firm’s flagship fiber brand made from recycled materials…

The company collects clear plastic bottles from processors around the country who first shred them into plastic flakes.

“We purchase these plastic flakes and convert them into small pellets,” said Hertwig. The pellets are then melted, extruded and spun into polyester yarn.

Repreve makes three types of recycled yarn: 100% from used plastic bottles, a hybrid of plastic bottles and fiber waste, and a hybrid of plastic bottles and used fabric…

“If it’s made from PET, we can recycle it,” said Hertwig. “This is all about educating consumers that high-quality products can be made from recycled waste.”

That article was from three years ago, but I hadn’t heard of the process till today. I’m not sure that my new slacks were made from fiber manufactured by Repreve, but it’s obviously some similar process, and I would indeed call it a “high-quality product.”

I didn’t buy it because of the recycling, I bought it because I liked the pants and the fabric. Recycling’s just the icing on the cake, but if more of this sort of thing can be done, then bravo.

A great deal of recycling is presently so messed up that a lot of what people think is being recycled actually ends up in landfills. Plus, most of the plastic waste causing problems is generated by the third world, not the US. But still, if there’s a way to make use of some portion of what’s recycled and to actually make the process cost-effective—and create a good product into the bargain—I’m all for it.

[NOTE: And here are the pants. I’m almost positive those are the ones, although the website doesn’t tout the recycled angle. They’re pretty basic, but the great thing about them is the fit and the comfort.]

On the Betsy Ross flag and Nike

The New Neo Posted on by

A good take on the topic is this National Review article by Jonah Goldberg, from which I’ll quote liberally:

Nike was all set to release a line of sneakers for the Fourth of July featuring the original Betsy Ross American flag with 13 stars in a circle.

According to reports, Kaepernick took offense because a handful of extremist groups like to brandish the original American flag to make some sort of point about something no one should care about. (I gather it has something to do with how this was “their” country before the federal government was formed. Or maybe, like many gibbons, they just like the sparkly stars and bright colors.)

The thing is, most Americans — and when I say most, I mean, like, nearly all of them — had no idea white supremacists were doing this. In countless news stories, reporters contacted experts who either didn’t know about it or were only vaguely aware that this is one of the things these groups like to wear as capes during dress-up time…

…[I]t’s true that if you search through enough old photos of Klan rallies and neo-Nazi pageants, you can spot a Betsy Ross flag from time to time.

Do you know what else you can probably spot if you look long and hard enough? Nike sneakers. Does that make Nikes symbols of white supremacy?

Of course not…

Nike followed the advice of a man whose business model is to stir grievance and controversy for its own sake. Suddenly, millions of people who once thought the Betsy Ross flag was just an admirable bit of Americana now associate it with hate groups. Worse, other entirely decent and patriotic Americans will now likely start brandishing the flag to offend people who, until recently, had no idea some hate groups adopted the flag in the first place.

The ranks of the perpetually offended will misread this trolling-to-own-the-libs effort as an endorsement of hate speech, and the culture war will have yet another idiotic fight on its hands, and a symbol of the country’s founding that should be a uniting image for all Americans will now be reduced to a weapon in that war.

The left sees that as a feature, not a bug.

This sort of thing has been going on for a long time, step by step by step. There are many who toil in the fields of taking completely innocuous and even laudable portions of American history and making them seem something vile and repulsive, and this is just one tiny chapter—maybe one tiny paragraph, or one tiny sentence—in that lengthy process.

What is a somewhat recent development is the willing acquiescence and cooperation of mainstream (or formerly mainstream) corporate entities such as Nike. I think, actually, it’s a business decision by Nike. They have decided they’ll gain more business by going along with Kaepernik than they would gain by opposing him, and so they are all in.

[NOTE: See also this.]

On the fine art of describing something before it occurs

The New Neo Posted on by

According to the MSM and pundits on the left, Trump’s 4th of July Mall appearance and speech was going to be a partisan usurping of a national holiday.

It wasn’t. It was this:

…[A] soaring presidential address — a celebration of the greatness of our country. “As we gather this evening, in the joy of freedom, we remember that we all share a truly extraordinary heritage,” Trump said. “Together, we are part of one of the greatest stories ever told — the story of America.”

He went on tell that story — from our struggle for independence, the fight to abolish slavery and secure women’s suffrage and civil rights. He called out the many great Americans who “defined our national character” from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson. He celebrated our inventors and explorers — from Lewis and Clark to Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright brothers, Amelia Earhart and the Apollo 11 astronauts.

One would think that Trump’s critics might have made sure they had advance copies before making such assertions. But apparently not. So why did they make them, and risk looking like fools themselves?

I submit the following modest speculations, which are neither mutually exclusive nor completely exhaustive:

(1) In their hubris, they think they actually know exactly what he will do, despite having been surprised by him many times.

(2) They need to fill up air time with something to feed their readers/viewers, and trashing Trump is always good for ratings or traffic.

(3) They are used to making errors which are then forgotten and/or excused and/or rationalized, and it’s on to the next criticism.

(4) They know that most of their readers/viewers were not going to watch the actual festivities or hear or read the actual speech anyway, so they can say what they want about it in order to feed the “evil Trump” narrative and for the most part they can get away with it.

That WaPo article I linked in the first paragraph, and quoted in the third, is from Marc Thiessen. If you read the comments (I read only the first bunch) you’ll see evidence for the fact that those who made the Trump predictions have nothing to fear from their audience in terms of criticism. Here are just a few of the comments:

“Here’s Marc, again, trying to agitate and stir up foment with hyperbole and utter nonsense. I never read his crap, preferring just to come in here and rattle his cage.”

“I didn’t read that drivel either.”

This one, after conceding that other previous presidents made speeches on the Fourth: “Truman, Kennedy, Ford, Clinton, Ford, Bush and Reagan were not elected by the Soviet Union or Russia and whatever they did as president was intended to benefit the U.S.A. and not themselves personally or the leader of Russia.”

“Columnist is just a slavish lackey used as click bait.”

Propaganda works—and although you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, if you can fool enough of them enough of the time, you can win.

For the Fourth of July: on liberty

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited version of a previous post.]

statueliberty

The Fourth isn’t just about barbecue, although I defer to no one in my regard for barbecue.

It’s about liberty. As the years go by, I appreciate that fact more and more, and sense that our liberty is more and more threatened from within as well as without—and by “within” I mean not just those among us who would destroy it for others, but something in the human heart and mind that means not everyone cares very much about it until they have lost it.

In fact, there’s something in many human hearts and minds that leads some people not to care about liberty even after they’ve lost it, unless they’re the ones in the Gulag.

For whatever reason, I’ve always been very sensitive to liberty, very touchy about it. For example, even when I was quite young, I would pay extra for a health insurance policy that gave me total freedom to choose my doctor. This may seem like a small thing, and at the time I didn’t connect it with any abstract principle such as “liberty.” But I had a horror of being boxed in by a government or a business or an agency telling what I could or could not do and where I could and could not go.

That’s not to say that I was some trailblazing, independent, courageous spirit, cutting an adventurous swath through the world. I lived a pretty ordinary life, I thought. I had a husband and a child. And even later, when I went through my political change, I had no idea where it would lead, either socially (estrangement from quite a few people, mostly mild but sometimes severe) or in terms of what I do with a great deal of my time (reading about politics/history, and writing this blog).

One doesn’t always have any idea where it will lead when you take a step, and then another step, and then another, and pretty soon you’re somewhere you never, never ever, thought you’d be.

When I was young I used to assume that a lot of people, the majority of people, felt the same way I did. Not just about liberty, but about a lot of things. For example, I thought just about everyone loved poetry—what’s not to like? I was in my thirties before I became aware that love of poetry was a relatively rare thing. Another thing I assumed, when managed care started taking over the health insurance world, was that more people would hate it and complain bitterly about it—and, if they could do it, would pay extra to get away from it. But I was surprised when so many people I knew didn’t seem all that offended by it, and even those who could have paid more in order to have choice often decided against it. They couldn’t be bothered, and were happy to save the money.

Then, when I was going through my slow political change between the fall of 2001 (post-9/11) and 2003, I was living a rather isolated life in a place when I hardly knew anyone, newly separated from a husband I’d been with for 30 years. I was also recovering from a very painful arm injury and surgery. So the change experience was a solitary one, and I didn’t start mentioning it to people until after it was pretty much complete some time in 2003.

I had somehow assumed that other people had been going through something similar to my political journey, although perhaps milder. This now seems to me a rather humorous thought, not to mention profoundly naive (you might even call it stupid), but that’s the way it was for me. I was truly shocked to be on the receiving end of a significant amount of hostility from a lot of people when I mentioned my positions on various issues of the day, and this sometimes involved friends and acquaintances I’d known for decades and with whom I’d never even discussed politics before or had a single disagreement of any substance.

Talk about an eye-opener.

Now I have a different way of looking at all of this. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday: Thomas Sowell turned 89 recently

The New Neo Posted on by

Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. I’ve written about him many times before. I recommend reading this tribute to Sowell in honor of his 89th birthday, and I especially agree with this:

Milton Friedman once said, “The word ‘genius’ is thrown around so much that it’s becoming meaningless, but nevertheless I think Tom Sowell is close to being one.”…

…[A]s a writer Thomas Sowell is truly the “Master of Idea Density” – he has the amazing talent of being able to consistently pack more ideas, insight, and wisdom into a single sentence or paragraph than what typically takes an entire essay or book for even the best writer!

I’ve noticed that “idea density” of Sowell’s before.

I also wrote this about him:

What an incisive mind he had and still has, and what a remarkably clear way of expressing himself. Several of his books are among the best treatments I’ve ever read of the differences between right and left…

For many liberals Sowell has a special clout because he is a black man of great achievement, and having been a liberal himself at one time—in fact, a leftist—he understands full well what motivates liberals and the more benign leftists, and can write of them and about them and to them with empathy.

That doesn’t mean that Sowell ever—ever ever ever—pulled his punches. Oh my, no! A sharp debater and speaker, he can be seen and heard in his prime on a large number of videos on YouTube; take your pick.

I’ve read Sowell’s autobiography, and reading it gave me a sense of the forces that shaped him into the tough and uncompromising thinker he was and is. But some of it is a mystery, as it is with all people. Sowell just seems to have been born with the stubborn strength to go his own way. That way was a different one, as you will see if you read the autobiography. It led him to, among other things, Harvard (undergrad) and U. of Chicago (PhD) degrees as an economist and then a career as renowned professor, and it led him from left to right when the facts (those stubborn things) didn’t fit his ideology.

The current crop of Democrats voice ideas that just a while while ago were kept hidden

The New Neo Posted on by

Dennis Prager does the hard work I don’t want to do—which is to listen to the entirety of the recent Democratic debates, and to point out some of the excesses.

To take one example:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.: “If billionaires can pay off their yachts, students should be able to pay off their student loans.”

My only response to this statement is to ask, Do most Democrats find that a compelling argument? Do they not realize what a non sequitur it is — and therefore how demagogic?

Billionaires, like non-billionaires, pay off their debts because they do not incur debts they cannot repay, not because they are billionaires. Senator Klobuchar apparently believes that non-billionaires need not pay off their debts. Every Democrat who addressed this issue said American society should repay student debts — which amount to $1.6 trillion. The party of “fairness” thinks it’s fair that every student who repaid his or college debts — and every young American who never went to college — must pay off that debt.

Well, it depends what the meaning of “should” is. All people who take out a loan shouldn’t do it unless they think they will be able to pay it off. So in a sense, students should be able to pay off their loans.

But that’s not what Klobuchar—widely touted as one of the more moderate Democratic candidates in 2020—meant. Let’s take a closer look at what she said:

…[Y]ou have so many people that are having trouble affording college and having trouble affording their premiums.

So I do get concerned about paying for college for rich kids. I do. But I think my plan is a good one. And my plan would be to, first of all, make community college free and make sure that everyone else besides that top percentile gets help with their education.

My own dad and my sister got their first degrees with community college. There’s many paths to success, as well as certifications.

Secondly, I’d used Pell grants. I’d double them from $6,000 to $12,000 a year and expand it to the number of families that get covered, to families that make up to $100,000.

And then the third thing I would do is make it easier for students to pay off their student loans. Because I can tell you this: If billionaires can pay off their yachts, students should be able to pay off their student loans.

So that’s the complete context of the remark. And it makes no more sense in context than it does as an isolated excerpt. It’s actually preposterous for just the reasons Prager says it is: billionaires have a lot of money and families who are not particularly rich don’t. And most students aren’t going to get jobs that make them billionaires, either. So many will have trouble paying off their loans.

If simple economics were to rule, no one would make such loans to students unless there was a lot of evidence that they’d be paid off. But that’s not the way student loans actually work.

Note that Klobuchar leaves out one pesky little detail: how will this be paid for? There are a lot of students in the United States who would like to go to community colleges for free, and to 4-year colleges who will qualify for Pell grants.

Here’s more from Klobuchar on the topic, positioning herself as the moderate—which she actually is, but only compared to some of the other 2020 Democratic candidates—because she’s not advocating free college tuition for all, including free four-year colleges.

Klobuchar also makes it clear that she’d like to offer free college for all, but she’s not a “magic genie.” But I still don’t see the details of how her proposals would be paid for, which puts them in “magic genie” territory in my book. Klobuchar claims that she has found ways to pay for it but as far as I can tell she never specifies those ways.

Let me guess: the same way everything else will be paid for? Taxing those evil wealthy people, and not just those billionares with their yachts? And will those people be able to support all the social welfare the Democrats are promising? And will they decide to stop producing, or reduce their production, or just go elsewhere?

I’m not really meaning to pick on Klobuchar, who is by no means the worst offender among the Democrats. The point I’m trying to make is that the so-called “moderates” at this point are anything but, and that’s even compared to just one short decade ago.

Remember Joe the Plumber and Obama’s “spread the wealth” remark? In 2008 it was considered by many people to be a somewhat shocking (and revealing) indication of Obama’s socialist propensities, intentions which he had mostly tried to cover up during the campaign. Remarks about “spreading the wealth” were considered something that a candidate couldn’t admit to the American public or that public would reject that candidate.

But now? What Obama said in 2008, and backtracked from, would be considered mainstream now. That’s how quickly things have changed.

[NOTE: Proposals such as Klobuchar’s and the even more extreme suggestions of some other candidates would have the added benefit to the left of shoring up endangered academic institutions that serve as leftist indoctrination camps. The left needs the colleges, and at this point many colleges need the left to bail them out.]

So, who’s the Fascist?

The New Neo Posted on by

Not a Fascist in the economic sense (which isn’t how most people use the word these days, anyway), but in the “willing and eager to use the apparatus of the state to stomp on your liberties” sense.

Why, Frederica Wilson, current Democratic member of the US House of Representatives:

Democratic Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson asserted that people who mock members of Congress online should face prosecution.

“Those people who are online making fun of members of Congress are a disgrace, and there is no need for anyone to think that is unacceptable [sic],” Wilson said during comments made Tuesday outside of the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Homestead, Florida.

“We’re gonna shut them down and work with whoever it is to shut them down, and they should be prosecuted,” she continued. “You cannot intimidate members of Congress, frighten members of Congress. It is against the law, and it’s a shame in this United States of America.”

There you have it.

By the way, as far as I can see, this is only a news story on the right. When I Google “Frederica Wilson, CNN” (or NY Times, or MSNBC) I get a bunch of old stories about her. And when I Google a direct quote from this recent statement of Wilson’s, I only get news outlets or blogs on the right.

Wilson seems to be calling for some version of the Sedition Act of 1918, not exactly a high point in American history (although I’m pretty certain that her proposed law would not apply to mockery of Trump and/or other Republicans):

It forbade the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for five to 20 years. The act also allowed the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable speech or opinion. It applied only to times “when the United States is in war.”

But at least that had the excuse of having been enacted during wartime and of applying only to wartime. Actually, it was passed towards the end WWI and ended with that war’s end. Later SCOTUS decisions indicate that a similar law would probably be held unconstitutional.

Oh, and that 1918 bill passed the House almost unanimously, with only one dissenting vote. It passed the Senate, too, but with quite a bit of opposition. The opposition to the 1918 act came almost entirely from Republican senators.

As San Francisco and Seattle go…

The New Neo Posted on by

…so goes Austin, Texas:

The [Austin] city council has voted to rescind prohibitions on camping, sleeping, and panhandling on public sidewalks – but not in front of city hall, of course.

A couple of observations:

(1) I wonder whether most of these rule changes allowing tents and sleeping on sidewalks in cities are passed by city councils and or mayoral orders rather than by citizens’ votes. My guess is that it’s most if not all.

(2) In the comments to the post I linked, some people said that Austin is already overrun with homeless people sleeping outside. So I’m not sure whether this law actually changes anything.

(3) Greg Abbott has tweeted that the state of Texas will override this.

(4) People in the cities involved have gotten used to a level of squalor that even just a few years ago would have been considered intolerable. It’s partly the old boiling frog thing, and it’s partly that they feel helpless to come up with actual solutions and/or unwilling to implement ones that seem too Draconian to liberal sensibilities.

Does anyone doubt for one moment…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that if Obama had done what Trump did in Korea we’d never hear the end of how wonderful it was? Obama might even get his second Peace Prize.

And that’s without even knowing if the results will be something good. The gesture would have been more than enough, had Obama made it.

But not only is the press down on everything Trump does, they also cannot believe that Trump did this. Their predictions were that he’d start a war with North Korea, a really terrifying war. And although it certainly is possible that could happen, so far the visuals have been anything but.

If “Nixon was the only one who could go to China,” perhaps “Trump is the only one who could go to North Korea.” It makes them livid with anger. Why, or why, couldn’t Obama the Great have done it?

Antifa and anti-masking laws

The New Neo Posted on by

The rise of Antifa and in particular attacks like the recent one on Andy Ngo is an alarming trend that needs to be stopped. It would be good if there was more bipartisan alarm about the phenomenon, but unfortunately there is far too much justification and/or excuse-marking on the part of the left for what are essentially fascist tactics (as long as such tactics are used against someone on the right, of course).

Ngo has this to say to officials in Portland, Oregon, the city where he was attacked:

“How many more people have to be beaten and attacked in the city of Portland before things change?” conservative journalist Andy Ngo told CNN on Tuesday.

“I am by far not the first one. There’s been many other incidents that have happened since 2016 and the policing has remained the same, which is a policy of not engaging with militant protestors.”

I very much doubt that anything will change in Portland regarding police practices, however.

Then there is the possibility of anti-masking laws. One of the many problems with Antifa is that its violent demonstrators usually wear face coverings that make it impossible to identify them from photos or videos. Anti-masking laws have been passed in many US states, and the origins in many cases have to do with combating the KKK.

You can find a list of states that have anti-masking laws here; Oregon does not appear to be one of them. Interestingly enough, New York and Massachusetts do have such laws, as well as California and DC.

Here’s an example of one such statute, the California law:

CALIFORNIA Penal Code Section 182-185
185. Section One Hundred and Eighty-five. It shall be unlawful for any person to wear any mask, false whiskers, or any personal disguise (whether complete or partial) for the purpose of: One–Evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification in the commission of any public offense. Two–Concealment, flight, or escape, when charged with, arrested for, or convicted of, any public offense. Any person violating any of the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor.

Courts have had a mixed record on whether anti-masking laws violate free speech rights or the right to associate, the results seeming to depend heavily on how narrowly or broadly such laws are constructed. For example:

These laws have been challenged on the grounds that they violate the guarantees of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution to free speech and free association. Some courts have weighed freedom of speech against the public safety interest, and upheld such laws. For example, the Georgia Supreme Court found the law constitutional on the grounds that the wearing of the mask was an act of intimidation and a threat of violence, which is not protected speech. That law has exceptions for holiday celebrations, theatre performances, and occupational safety; the ruling makes it unclear if someone is violating the law if they wear a mask without the intent to threaten violence. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a New York law on the ground that wearing a Ku Klux Klan mask did not convey a protected message beyond that conveyed by wearing a hood and robe. Other courts have struck down anti-mask laws. For example, Tennessee and Florida state laws have been invalidated on the grounds that they were unconstitutionally broad. An ordinance in Goshen, Indiana, was struck down based on First Amendment doctrine that specifically protects anonymous speech and anonymous association, especially for unpopular groups like the KKK.

Many European countries have anti-masking laws as well.

Yesterday David French wrote this article in National Review calling for such laws in the face (pun intended) of Antifa. In it, he cites a 2004 Second Circuit ruling in Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan vs. Kerik that upheld New York’s anti-mask law:

Assuming for the discussion that New York’s anti-mask law makes some members of the American Knights less willing to participate in rallies, we nonetheless reject the view that the First Amendment is implicated every time a law makes someone-including a member of a politically unpopular group-less willing to exercise his or her free speech rights. While the First Amendment protects the rights of citizens to express their viewpoints, however unpopular, it does not guarantee ideal conditions for doing so, since the individual’s right to speech must always be balanced against the state’s interest in safety, and its right to regulate conduct that it legitimately considers potentially dangerous.

Such laws cannot be overly broad or they will constitute an infringement on free speech and/or assembly rights and would be likely to be struck down.

And of course, if passed, they must be enforced to have any teeth, and the penalties must be strong enough to act as some sort of deterrent. If the city of Portland is unwilling to stop Antifa demonstrators from beating someone up, I can’t see that authorities will be willing to arrest those same people for merely wearing masks.

Russian submariners and Pence’s plane

The New Neo Posted on by

Are these two news stories related?:

Vladimir Putin today called an urgent meeting with defence chiefs hours after 14 sailors died in a mystery submarine blast…

It came as US Vice President Mike Pence was called back to Washington for an “undisclosed emergency”.

The announcements came at exactly the same time but it is not clear if the two are linked.

The White House and the Kremlin would not say the reason for the change of plans.

They may be linked, but I don’t think any of this will turn out to be of geopolitical importance, although of course the blast is of great importance to the Russian Navy and to the families of the sailors who lost their lives.

And the news was originally that Pence’s plane was turned back. That turns out to have been incorrect; a trip of Pence’s was canceled, but the report now is that the trip plans were changed before the plane ever took off.

But in this case I don’t think press incompetence was the cause of the error; Pence’s office gave out two conflicting messages, one from Randy Gentry, “a representative from Pence’s office,” and the correction from Alyssa Farah, Mike Pence’s spokeswoman.

Kamala Harris and the busing issue

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I used to spell it “bussing,” but I’m choosing to move with the times here. Each spelling has its own problems. “Busing” makes it seem as though it should be pronounced like part of the word “abusing.” But “bussing,” which is much more phonetically correct, seems like it might mean “kissing.” See more discussion of this pressing (not presing) issue in this thread.]

In using the pre-planned tactic to attack Biden on his long-ago stance on busing, Kamala Harris won the battle for now, at least among some Democrats whose votes she is seeking. Biden has been the supposed front-runner, and the consensus is that Harris harmed him in the debate and that her own star is rising.

I already discussed the substance of the busing issue and Harris’s argument here. I’m bringing this up again, however, to make a different point—the same point that Harris’s former paramour Willie Brown made recently:

“Harris got all the attention for playing prosecutor in chief, but her case against former Vice President Joe Biden boiled down in some ways to a ringing call for forced school busing. It won’t be too hard for Trump to knock that one out of the park in 2020,” Brown wrote.

“Trump must have enjoyed every moment and every answer[ in the Democratic debates], because he now knows he’s looking at a bunch of potential rivals who are still not ready for prime time,” Brown concluded.

Brown dated Harris in the 1990s as the future senator was getting her start in politics. Brown, then Democratic speaker of the California State Assembly, appointed Harris to her first significant political office on the California Medical Assistance Commission in 1994.

I’m in agreement with Brown’s observation. Then again, to Kamala Harris’s way of thinking, if she doesn’t take Biden down a peg or two (or three or four) soon, then she can’t ascend. There’s only room for one Democratic nominee, and she aims to be it. So do the others, but they didn’t set their sights so firmly on Biden (at least, they haven’t done so yet).

But there are dangers in the long term to taking a position such as Harris’s. As Brown points out, she will be saddled with the label of supporting busing, a highly unpopular position.

However, there is also the phenomenon of denial and reliance on the ignorance and/or poor memory of the American public, coaxed by the ever-helpful MSM. The MSM favors Democrats over Republicans, of course. But it also plays favorites among Democrats, and Harris is an MSM favorite—or at least, the favorite du jour. As such, she will be helped along in her assertions and then her denials of whatever assertions later prove inexpedient.

[NOTE: I’ve written about Brown before, here and here.]