Saturday's Final Word

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Saturday, in the tabs, every day's the Fourth of July ...

Ed: The European Common Market was a great idea. The European Union ... not so much. It formalized the rule of elites over the sovereignty of the various peoples of Europe, and the result has been devastating to Western values, liberty, and the alliance with the US. The adoption of a single currency alone has been an ongoing thorn in the sides of various countries, with the burden largely borne by France and Germany, but the negative impacts everywhere. But the absolute worst part of the EU has been the massive migration of people from North Africa and the Middle East, which has created instability in both culture and security across the entire continent.

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When these countries wear their NATO hats, they insist that Transatlantic cooperation is the cornerstone of our mutual security. But when these countries wear their EU hats, they pursue all sorts of agendas that are often utterly adverse to US interests and security—including censorship, economic suicide/climate fanaticism, open borders, disdain for national sovereignty/promotion of multilateral governance and taxation, support for Communist Cuba, etc etc. This inconsistency cannot continue. Either the great nations of Europe are our partners in protecting the Western civilization that we inherited from them or they are not. But we cannot pretend that we are partners while those nations allow the EU’s unelected, undemocratic, and unrepresentative bureaucracy in Brussels to pursue policies of civilizational suicide.

Ed: Exactly this. At some point, the question of shared security has to reflect shared values. Right now, as I wrote yesterday, the only nations in the EU that share our values are those in eastern Europe, where those values came with hard lessons during their era of Soviet domination. Speaking of Cuba, though ...

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Reuters: The U.S. pressure campaign against Venezuela has led "elements within the Cuban regime" to reach out to the U.S. about what the region would look like without President Nicolas Maduro leading Venezuela, two sources familiar with the contacts said on Friday.

The sources, who asked to remain anonymous to describe sensitive information, declined to say who specifically from Cuba had contacted the U.S.

"Elements within the Cuban regime reached out to the U.S.," a source briefed on the matter said. "There have been discussions between the two about what the world would look like without a Maduro regime."

Ed: The regime in Havana is getting nervous. They can't export revolution any more, and the muscular US response to Maduro's crime and tyranny must have them thinking they could be next. Europe won't rescue them, and neither will the Russians. This is the result of projecting strength and resolve.

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Ed: Who's reporting the categories here ... CNN? Also, note to self: never ride public transit in Charlotte. 

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Politico: Immigration hardliners across Washington are using last week’s shooting of two National Guard members to push the Trump administration to further limit who can enter the U.S., well beyond restrictions the White House has taken in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

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A number of lawmakers and Trump administration officials view the shooting — by an Afghan man who’d been granted asylum — as an opportunity for an aggressive effort to load on new layers of screening of would-be migrants and asylum seekers across the world.

Proposals range from mandatory in-person interviews for asylum applicants to deporting millions of people the administration says entered the U.S. without adequate vetting from the Biden administration. Other suggestions include a variety of additional checks to reveal any connections to terror groups.

Ed: I'll give Politico credit for not using the words "pounce" or "seize" in this article, but that's clearly the genre of narrative being presented. The question isn't whether "hardliners" are using these incidents, but why screening processes failed to prevent incidents like these – not to mention plenty of other issues, such as those in "Minnedishu," where one billion dollars or more disappeared, some of which may have gone to support terrorists in Somalia. 

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Ed: It will, just as soon as those news stations can transform it into a Republicans Pounce™ narrative. 

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NY Post: Members of the Democratic Socialists of America are eating up Chinese propaganda like candy, insisting only state control of private business can save workers from the “oligarchy.”

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To meet a rising interest in the Chinese Communist Party, a new DSA monthly seminar about “modern China and lessons for US socialists” was held Thursday evening.

The DSA and its poster boy, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, routinely insist they’re socialists, not communists — socialism seeks to reform capitalism while communism seeks to eliminate it — but these CCP-themed seminars cast that distinction in a far murkier light.

Ed: Socialism and communism are essentially the same thing. Socialism seeks to seize the means of production in the name of the proletariat; communism is another name for the end result of socialism. They both lead to poverty and tyranny eventually, unless a nation manages to escape socialism first. 

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Ed: See above. There is usually a period of "useful idiocy" intended to create crises that justify the seizure of political power and economic resources in the cycle through socialism to authoritarianism. It always requires an Emmanuel Goldstein or two. 

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Elizabeth Stauffer in WashEx: Over the past 10 months, Trump has forced Democrats into defending some of the most indefensible, anti-American positions imaginable: fierce opposition to a comprehensive audit of the federal government, resistance to the deportations of illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes, and allowing biological males to compete in female sports — to name a few.

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But perhaps the most egregious example is the Democrats’ sudden sympathy for two narco-terrorists — crew members on a drug boat who were being paid eye-watering sums to ferry deadly drugs into the U.S. ...

Suddenly, every Democratic politician and journalist who had done a quick Geneva Convention search on ChatGPT proclaimed that Hegseth was a war criminal. They said live drone footage allegedly showed two men clinging to the remains of their burning boat right before the second strike snuffed them out.

They had not seen the footage, of course, because it’s classified. But they took the word of their anonymous sources, because the story was simply too irresistible to pass up.

Ed: I have called this Trump's "cornering strategy" in the past, as he easily forces Democrats to paint themselves into easily avoidable corners. You'd think that Democrats would have figured this out by now. 

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Gizmodo via Instapundit: Earlier this year, the studio announced it would be bringing Star Wars, later titled Star Wars: A New Hope, back to theaters to celebrate its massive anniversary, but there was the big question of what version? Would it be the Special Edition that had become the standard over the past 30 years? The version with Greedo shooting first, Jabba the Hutt, and rings around the Death Star?

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Now, we know that the answer is “No.” This will be “a newly restored version of the classic Star Wars (1977) theatrical release” that will play in theaters for a limited time. And, according to other reports, it’ll even be released in IMAX, though Lucasfilm has yet to confirm that.

Back in 1997, when George Lucas remastered and tinkered with the original trilogy with the Special Editions, those became the only versions that Lucasfilm would release. That meant in theaters, on streaming, on DVD, all that stuff. As a result, copies of the original film—with Han shooting first, no Jabba, etc.—became rather rare. Last year, though, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy attended a screening of one of those prints, giving the event an official seal of approval. And now we know why.

Ed: Finally. Let films stand in their original form, or remake them entirely, but Lucas' tinkering with the original Star Wars has always been an abomination. Everything Lucas has done since The Empire Strikes Back has made this series worse, including his later edits to the two real gems of the IP. 

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Ed: Make it so. 

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