Wednesday Potpourri

First, consider the source. Arwa Mahdawi is a radical feminist who writes for the Guardian. She is evidently not a Trump supporter.

Yet, yesterday she wrote this:

All of this could not come at a worse time for Biden. His campaign, I don’t need to tell you, is in complete disarray. Day after day there has been headline after headline about the president being too frail and feeble for office. Biden already looked like a weak old man compared to Trump (who is only three years younger than him). Now that contrast has been extraordinarily heightened. Trump is the guy who jumps straight up after being fired at by an assassin; Biden is the guy who stumbles up the stairs. If you’re an undecided voter swayed by which candidate looks more presidential, your mind just got made up.

Second, for reasons that defy reason the Secret Service Director, one Kimberly Cheatle still has her job. Taking responsibility is not endemic to the Democratic Party.

As we suggested on Saturday, she is doubtless a Jill Biden hire:

Embattled Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who is facing congressional outcry and calls to resign over security lapses leading to former President Donald Trump’s near-assassination Saturday, landed her role thanks largely to a close relationship with first lady Jill Biden, The Post has learned.

Cheatle, 53, is the first woman to lead the presidential protection agency and secured the non-Senate-confirmed role in August 2022 after a three-year stint as senior director of global security at PepsiCo. Before that, she had served 27 years in the Secret Service, beginning in the Clinton administration.

Four sources close to President Biden’s family, including people who interacted with Cheatle during the Obama-Biden administration, said she was well liked by the future first lady and her most senior aides, including top adviser Anthony Bernal.

“Cheatle served on Dr. Biden’s second lady detail and Anthony pushed for her,” a Democratic insider told The Post. “Anthony has no national security or law enforcement experience. He should have no influence over the selection of the USSS director.”

“I heard at the time she was being considered for director that Anthony had pushed her forward as an option,” another well-placed source told The Post.

Prof. Alan Dershowitz has pointed out the obvious: Cheatle must be fired. The reason is that she does not have enough moral sense to resign in disgrace.

Third, as for Cheatle’s notion that the Secret Service needed more women, especially women who were not tall enough to cover a tall male candidate, Elon Musk commented:

Having a small person as body cover for a large man is like an undersized Speedo at the beach – doesn’t cover the subject.

Fourth, doubtless you are wondering which candidate China prefers in the upcoming election, and why.

To answer the burning question David Goldman wrote this on Twitter:

At NatCon4, moderator Curt Mills asked China panelists whom China preferred as president. Trump without a doubt, I said, to the push back of other panelists. Trump wants deals, not war. He'll drive a hard bargain but always leave something on the table for the other side. He doesn't care about regime change in China or anywhere else. Biden is an ideological fanatic who picked a fight with Russia that he's losing.

It’s always interesting to consider contrary opinion.

Fifth, you will have heard the earnest declamations, to the effect that migrants are no more prone to criminal behavior than you and I.

Apparently, it’s a lie. 

No surprise there. Philippe Lemoine reports on the crime numbers in France:

We're at the point in France where, in most large cities, immigrants are responsible for between 1/3 and 1/2 of reported crime or even more than that, but there are people seriously explaining that Science has demonstrated immigration has no causal effect on crime because a paper using a shift-share instrument in Italy on data that are 20 years old found no statistically significant effect .We are truly reaching level of midwittery previously thought unimaginable.

Sixth, apparently, the French electorate saved that nation from government by the far right-- that is, the pro-Israeli right. And we cannot have that.

The French people voted for Islamists and for far left radicals. At a time when Muslim migrants are an increasing problem, the French public chose to placate them.

Now, the new leadership group is hard at work trying to tax the country to death. Given that it has been tried and has failed, the left now wants to re-impose a wealth tax. Increased taxes on income are also being considered.

The result ought to be the same as the result that happened the last time the French tried this. An exodus of the wealthy, with their wealth.

The Wall Street Journal has the story:

Sunday’s election produced a majority for no one. The largest bloc is a loose left-wing alliance calling itself the New Popular Front (NFP in the French acronym), and the largest vote winner within that alliance is the France Unbowed party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Think Bernie Sanders with less economic sense, antisemitism and Gallic hair…. 

One bargaining chip in play is revival of France’s failed wealth tax. NFP included this tax in its pre-election platform, described as a “strengthened wealth solidarity tax.” The goal: “abolish the privileges of billionaires” with this and other tax raids.

Never mind that France has already tried a wealth tax, most recently beginning in 1989. The threshold and rates varied by year, but at its worst it taxed wealth above €10 million at 1.5%. The gimmick was what one might call, in French, un failure.

The promised revenue never materialized. At most the tax raised 0.2% of GDP in any one year, says Cristina Enache of the Tax Foundation. Capital, talent and entrepreneurs left instead of paying it.

Between 2000 and 2014, France lost some 42,000 people with net assets of $1 million or more, according to New World Wealth, a South African global wealth-intelligence firm. The French economist Éric Pichet reported that between the wealth tax’s passage in 1988 and 2007 capital flight amounted to some €200 billion. 

The wealth tax stifles entrepreneurial initiative.

Entrepreneurs were stung especially by the law’s treatment of paper gains and losses, which could leave them paying a wealth tax on holdings in their own companies after those stakes lost market value. It was safer to leave and start companies elsewhere.

There was a time not so long ago when Paris admitted this. Mr. Macron abolished the wealth tax in 2018, only partially replacing it with a complex real-estate tax. Between 2018 and 2021, an average of 370 people who would have been subject to the old wealth tax returned to France each year and 260 left. Between 2011 and 2016, some 950 of these wealthy individuals had left each year and only 370 moved in, according to France Stratégie, a government-funded policy advisory.

Seventh, the executives at MSNBC took Joe and Mika off the air on Monday. That would be Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski.

Apparently, these suits did not trust the dynamic duo to avoid making a stupid remark about the attempt on Donald Trump’s life.

Now, Joe and Mika have taken serious offense at this vote of no confidence. And they are threatening to retire.

It brings to mind an old line from Clint Eastwook: Go ahead. Make my day!

Eighth, over at Microsoft, DEI has DIEd. The company is getting rid of its diversity, equity and inclusion team.

The Daily Mail reports:

Microsoft sparked internal revolt after it fired its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) team, leading the program's leader to slam the company's 'changing business needs.' 

The tech giant's move was exposed in an email obtained by Business Insider, which appears to show the DEI internal team leader criticizing the fact diversity was 'no longer business critical.'

Microsoft joins a number of tech companies in walking back DEI commitments that were made in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, including Google, Meta and Zoom.  

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