The Republic of Ireland has just made it easier to get divorced in a May 23 referendum supported by an amazing (given how Ireland was as recently as the 1960s) 82% of voters [Ireland Votes Overwhelmingly to Ease Divorce Restrictions, by Ed O’Loughlin, New York Times, May 26, 2019]. Until now, Irish people wishing to get divorced had had to endure a cooling off period of four years from the date of applying for a divorce to it actually being granted. [Ireland’s Anti-Christian Revolution, Piers Shepherd, Chronicles, February 7, 2019] The plebiscite has cut this to just two years. We know this means more children raised by single mothers. Unfortunately, the evidence is that this has consequences for the children—and for countries.

In the USA, of course, divorce is already far easier and this is reflected in the composition of US households.  In 1950, 93% of American children lived with both of their parents, parents who had signaled their commitment to each other through marriage. This created obvious stability for American kids: mother looked after the home, father was the main breadwinner and they were very unlikely to find some strange adult imposing themselves on their lives. By 2016, life was very different for a large minority of American children. Only 69% of them lived in two-parent households; 23% of them were being raised by single mothers [The Majority of Children Live With Two Parents, Census Bureau Reports, United States Census Bureau, November 17, 2019]; only 62% living with both biological parents. [More Than 60% of U.S. Kids Live with Two Biological Parents, by Nicholas Zill, IFS, February 2, 2015]

President Trump suddenly announced on Thursday a serious proposal to curb illegal immigration: impose tariffs on Mexico to convince our southern neighbor to solve the problem. Maybe this welcome miracle happened because Javanka has left town.  Because the week’s earlier Trump trope, outflank the Democrats on the Left on black crime, is seriously Javanka-style stupid.

Trump plans to impose a 5 percent tariff on all Mexican goods starting June 10. [Statement from the President Regarding Emergency Measures to Address the Border Crisis, May 30, 2019]The tariffs will continue to rise to 25 percent by the end of the year and will only come down if Mexico shows progress in halting illegal immigration. Trump says the plan would also pressure Mexico to stop the flow of drugs and possibly attract manufacturers back to America.

He Tweeted:

In order not to pay Tariffs, if they start rising, companies will leave Mexico, which has taken 30% of our Auto Industry, and come back home to the USA. Mexico must take back their country from the drug lords and cartels. The Tariff is about stopping drugs as well as illegals!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2019

This is a strong and sensible move by the president. It was naturally met with outrage from Mexico, the U.S. Main Stream Media, and, needless to say, by some Republicans. [Trump says U.S. to impose 5 percent tariff on all Mexican goods, by Alex Johnson, NBC News, May 30, 2019]

Journalists interrogated White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney over the proposal and insisted Americans would pay the cost of these tariffs. Mulvaney reminded the press that illegal immigration costs more than a temporary rise in some consumer goods.

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s government, a coalition between Kurz’s Austrian People’s Party and the National Conservative Freedom Party, collapsed after nationalists rebelled against Europe’s “youngest leader”. [Austrian chancellor Kurz outsted after nationalists turn on him, by Boris Groendahl, Bloomberg, May 27, 2019] Of course, Kurz started it by overreacting to a Leftist media hit job on his coalition partners. Now Kurz may find himself out of power for the foreseeable future—or possibly strengthened, depending on how   Austrian elections in September turn out. Either way, European and American patriots should learn the moral: any coalition with the “center-” a.k.a. Respectable Right will likely end in betrayal. 

The crisis began with a sophisticated sting operation: Freedom Party leader Hans Christian-Strache’s secretly-filmed honeypot meeting (in 2017!) with the supposed “niece of a Russian oligarch.” They discussed obtaining control of a major newspaper and getting “access” to public contracts. [Austria Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache resigns over video scandal involving Russian fixer, Agence France-Presse, South China Morning Post, May 18, 2019] Strache, thinking he was in private, spoke stupidly, but it’s important to note he didn’t actually do anything. He claims it was just a political hit job and also used illegal methods. But he fell on his sword anyway.

It’s unclear who was behind the video. And Main Stream Media journalists/ activists, rejoicing at Strache’s downfall, will probably never investigate. [Austria scandal: Mystery of the honey-trap video, by Bethany Bell, BBC, May 24, 2019]. Theories range from rival Austrian parties to Russian oligarchs themselves, though the man whose name was used, Igor Makarov, says he wants to find out who was behind the “unauthorized use of my name”. [Russian Oligarch Denies Links to Video That Brought Down Austria’s Government, The Moscow Times, May 20, 2019] One former German spy claims it was the Mossad, acting to take out a nationalist party that had supposedly fueled anti-Semitism. The former spy was then himself accused of anti-Semitism. [German Ex-Spy Chief: Mossad Behind Video Leak That Led to Austria Gov’t Collapse, Sputnik, May 28, 2019]

What is it about special counsel Robert Mueller that he cannot say clearly and concisely what he means?

His nine-minute summary of the findings of his office, after two years of investigation, was a mess. It guarantees that the internecine warfare that has poisoned our politics continues into 2020.

If it was the intention of the Russian hackers and trolls of 2016 to sow discord within their great power rival, they have succeeded beyond their dreams.

Consider. Of the charge of conspiracy to collude with the Russians to hack the emails of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign, Mueller said, "there was insufficient evidence to charge a larger conspiracy."

This suggests that there was at least some evidence to conclude that Donald Trump's campaign did conspire with Vladimir Putin's Kremlin to fix the 2016 election, just not enough evidence to sustain a charge of treason.

Didn't they use to call this McCarthyism?

See, earlier, by Peter Brimelow: Time, Once Again, To Rethink Martin Luther King Day–The 2019 Edition

Over Memorial Day weekend, some shocking news broke about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. David Garrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning King biographer, came across some new details about the FBI's secret bugs of King in the National Archives. (The full tapes are not scheduled for public release for about another decade.)

During one orgy in King's room at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., according to FBI summaries of the tapes, he watched and laughed as one of his ministers raped a parishioner. Another time, he jokingly referred to himself as the head of the "International Association for the Advancement of P***y-Eaters." There's more, but you get the gist.

With every statue in the country of Robert E. Lee being hauled off and sold for scrap, first, I would like to say that I oppose the removal of MLK's statue from the Washington Mall.

But the latest revelations also present me with a fantastic opportunity to renew my proposal that we replace Martin Luther King Day with Thurgood Marshall Day!

I say this knowing full well that Black America has been waiting with wild anticipation for what this white girl has to say about a national holiday celebrating an African American civil rights icon. But it is a national holiday and, most important, Marshall is a much cooler African American civil rights icon.

In addition to the fact that Marshall worked closely with J. Edgar Hoover to expel communists from the NAACP—while King's organization was bristling with them, to the immense  annoyance of President John F. Kennedy—Marshall redeemed blacks' civil rights the American way: by winning his battles in court.

That's how it's supposed to be done in a country of laws. We're not French.