Elon does it again!

Was there ever a better advertisement for immigration? Elon Musk, who came to America from South Africa by way of Canada, has done it again: he launched the first civilian spacecraft to orbit the earth, with an all-civilian and properly diverse four-person crew. Aboard were a billionaire and a cancer survivor and physician assistant at St. Jude's Research Hospital; three whites and one black; two men and two women. And although the billionaire was the designated commander, and the black woman was the designated pilot, in fact the SpaceX Crew Capsule was entirely self-driven, just the way Mr Musk wants his Teslas to be. It was a great three days for him, for legal immigration, for the U.S., and for our new passion of inclusivity.

 

The Taliban atop Mount Biden

 

Was ever a nation more humiliated? I suspect that even the flagpole was left behind as America scrambled to get out at whatever cost to its standing in the world.

What can I say?

 August 16, 2021 -- "A date," as another president said in another time, "which will live in infamy." Alas, this time the infamy is ours. Joe Biden has given us the Bay of Pigs, the fall of Saigon, Desert One, and 9/11 all wrapped into one shambolic package.

More gold for the USA

 

 

"I freaking love living there," said Tamyra Mensah-Stock when some idiot asked her how she liked representing the United States after she won gold in wrestling yesterday. Watch the joy on her face at https://twitter.com/i/status/1422649220482408454

As good as gold

 

We may have lost Simone Biles, but we still have Suni Lee, born Sunisa Phabsomphou in St. Paul, Minnesota, the child of Hmong refugees from Laos and a happy offshoot of America's misadventure in Southeast Asia. Like the Highlander tribes of South Vietnam, the Hmong were intrepid fighters alongside Americans against North Vietnamese invaders. 

The eighteen-year-old was the fifth American woman to win the Olympic all-round gold medal in gymnastics, following Biles in 2016 and Gabby Douglas in 2012. (All three, as no woke news report fails to mention, are "women of color.") And she is one more proof if any be needed that legal immigration is one of this country's greatest strengths.

Hostage justice in Tokyo

The two Americans accused of helping Carlos Ghosn escape from Japan's weird criminal justice system have now pleaded guilty to the charge, after themselves being held for three months of interrogation without benefit of their attorneys. (Mr Ghosn calls this "hostage justice," and that sounds about right to me.) The two men, former Green Beret Michael Taylor and his son Peter Taylor were extradited to Japan after being jailed for nearly a year in Massachusetts. Why any American judge would play along with this is beyond my comprehension, but I suppose it has something to do with our perceived national interest.

I hope that the fix is in, and that the Taylors have been assured that they'll be found guilty and given a suspended sentence, as the Turks did with the pilots who flew the plane that whisked Mr Ghosn from Tokyo to Istanbul: they were sentenced to four years, two months in prison -- suspended.

Celebrated in America, censored at home

 

How delicious! Chloé Zhao won an Oscar yesterday in her adopted homeland, and the news has been censored in China, where she was born 39 years ago.

The news was briefly celebrated on Chinese social media, too, but the joyous posts didn't stay online very long. They were scrubbed by Xi Jinping's busy censors because Ms Zhao criticized her birth country in an interview eight years ago. 

In America by contrast, critics are celebrated. It's only those who go against the Woke consensus who are given a hard time. Indeed, I suspect that one reason "Nomadland" is in such favor is that it shows the hard lives of agricultural workers in California. 

Among other ironies, Ms Zhao is represented in the media as the first woman "of color" to win an Oscar for best director. Apparently this is considered a great event, even as America's best universities discriminate against Asian-American applicants. (If they didn't, they'd make up too large a portion of the student body, and in a Woke world that's inequitable.) 

Born in Bejing, Ms Zhao came to the US when she was in high school. She graduated from Mount Holyoke, where she'd likely have some difficulty being accepted today, were she eighteen and not famous.