Saturday Miscellany

First, remember Laura Helmuth, editor-in-chief of the previously august journal, Scientific American. As we reported here, she managed to make some appalling and vulgar remarks about the election results last week.

“Solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted high-school classmates are celebrating early results because f–k them to the moon and back,” she wrote in one post on the social media platform Bluesky on Nov. 5.

In another post, Helmuth wrote, “I apologize to younger voters that my Gen X is full of f–king fascists.”

“Every four years I remember why I left Indiana (where I grew up) and remember why I respect the people who stayed and are trying to make it less racist and sexist. The moral arc of the universe isn’t going to bend itself,” she also wrote on election night.

When I first reported the story I was wondering why she still has her job. Well, the moral arc of the universe has responded and has forced Helmuth to resign her position.

Good news for Scientific American.

Second, for those who are questioning Pete Hegseth’s qualifications to lead the Pentagon-- not entirely unreasonable, as it happens-- we recall the qualifications of a senior Obama and Biden official, one Wendy Sherman. She was one architect of the Iran nuclear deal. Before that, she helped North Korea gain access to nuclear weapons:

Wendy Sherman, one of Obama’s primary negotiators for the Iran Deal and deputy Secretary of State, had a master’s degree in social work. No foreign policy background whatsoever. She was bad at her job—abysmal, actually. I don’t want to hear the left’s complaints about Pete Hegseth, who, in contrast, is eminently qualified for the position of SecDef.

Third, what will Donald Trump do to combat the anti-Semitism that the Biden administration has allowed to fester in American universities.

Well, here is Trump, addressing the issue:

My first week back in the Oval Office, my administration will inform every college president that, if you do not end antisemitic propaganda, they will lose their accreditation and federal taxpayer support.

Fourth, an incidental remark by a German citizen, namely Ole Lehmann:

I'm German. 16 years ago, the EU and US economies were neck and neck. Today, the US economy is 50% larger than the entire EU combined. 

One suspects that the culprits here are mass migration and environmental regulation.

Fifth, in the aftermath of the election, ratings on CNN and MSNBC have cratered. The New York Times reports:

MSNBC has averaged 550,000 viewers since Election Day, a 39 percent decline compared with the network’s average in October. In prime time, MSNBC’s audience has declined 53 percent, according to the Nielsen data.

CNN, which has struggled with ratings for months, has also had falling viewership since the election. The cable news network has averaged 413,000 viewers since last Wednesday, a 22 percent decline from its October averages. In prime time, its viewership declines stand at 43 percent, Nielsen said.

Where did all the viewers go? Apparently, they went to Fox News:

The opposite has happened at Fox News, MSNBC’s conservative rival. Fox’s audience in prime time has grown 21 percent since last Wednesday, with an average of 3.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen. Its total day audience has jumped 38 percent.

Sixth, meanwhile, on the China front, President Biden is meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Peru. It is worth noting that China is building a major port facility in that nation, the better to enhance trade between South America and China. Also, that the port will be fully automated, making it far more efficient than the American ports whose union workers refuse to allow more automation.

According to David Goldman, a sane and sensible source for these matters, China is building trade relations with the global South.

Here is what Goldman said at the National Conservatism Conference on July 8:

In 1979 China took a nation of farmers and turned them into industrial workers, and multiplied GDP per capita 30 times. 

Now it plans to turn a nation of factory workers into a nation of engineers — think of South Korea. That’s a messy and costly transition. But China is doing it.

In 2020 I wrote of China’s plan to Sino-form the Global South. It knows a lot about getting people who make $3 a day to make $10 or $20 a day….

China’s population has been in decline, but its highly educated population is growing:

Ten and a half million university graduates, up 60% in 10 years, 2X our total – and a third are engineers. That’s more engineering graduates than the rest of the world combined. 

The Deng Xiaoping economic reforms were a rousing success, surely among the most successful reforms in human history.

We should give credit to capitalism, which was the engine that produced the reforms. But we are obliged to point out that China did it without the benefit of liberal democracy. Hopes for democratic liberalization died in Tiananmen Square in June of 1989.

One understands that the party line around here is that China will naturally fail because it does not have democratic elections and free expression. We are perhaps a bit overconfident about how well we will be able to compete against the Middle Kingdom.

We can’t produce enough artillery shells to supply Ukraine. China can make as many ship-killer missiles as it wants. That’s the biggest change in relative firepower since muskets replaced crossbows. A US destroyer can carry 100 missile interceptors. There’s no limit to how many missiles China can launch from the mainland. We talk about prioritizing China: With what?

We’re just rearranging the deck guns on the Titanic.

China has 3 million 5G base stations. We have 100,000. China dominates key industries—telecom infrastructure, EVs, solar power, drones, steel and shipbuilding — and it’s aiming at semiconductors. Biden’s Treasury Secretary goes to China and says, “Please, you’ve got too much industrial capacity, don’t export so much!” What about OUR capacity?

He continues:

The other big thing China got right is the transformation of the Global South. It doubled exports to the Global South since Covid – now exports more to the Global South than to all developed markets. Assimilates billions of people into its economic sphere. It did this with 200 soldiers deployed outside China versus our 230,000. 

We spent $7 trillion on forever wars. China spent $1 trillion on Belt and Road Initiative investments. Who got more influence?

Seventh, news from dystopia. That is, news from the Labour Party’s war against free expression in Once-Great Britain.

From Eyal Yacoby:

DISGUSTING: A British man wrote on social media that he doesn’t want to see Palestinian flags all over the UK. The police then showed up to his house at 4am to arrest him. You can take over the streets of the UK, chant in support of terrorism, but be arrested if you oppose it.

Prof. Norman Fenton also provides some information:

So the police allow thugs to disrupt the whole of Central London and attack Jewish owned buildings but if you tweet that you don’t like seeing Palestinian flags on the streets then you get arrested at home in the middle of the night.

Eighth, one Sheralynn Ifill called Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth a white supremacist. She obviously has a very limited vocabulary and precious few IQ points.

Now, the good news. 

Former Jill Biden Press Secretary Michael LaRosa responded:

This shit has to stop. Opposing DEI initiatives does not make you a white supremacist. Conversations and demonization of this kind are a big reason we got our asses kicked….

Voices like this on the left are turning the Democratic Party into a joke. … Name calling, vilifying and defaming nominees you oppose, even if you have good reason to oppose them, represents everything the Democratic Party should be running away from.

Well said, worthy of attention.

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