IF WE ARE TO AVOID A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS, THERE NEED TO BE MANY MORE TO COME: Trump Gets A Win At The Supreme Court.
April 4, 2025
OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Project Kuiper readies long-awaited operational satellite launch. “United Launch Alliance is set to loft the first 27 satellites of the more than 3,200 planned for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband constellation April 9, roughly a year behind schedule as the company races to meet deployment deadlines.”
TERRAFORMING NEWS: Lichens Thrive in Harsh Mars-Like Conditions, Groundbreaking Study Finds.
WELL:
For the record, this is exactly what I voted for. pic.twitter.com/N2aqGHr8p2
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 4, 2025
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Before the Heart Stops: The Overlooked Clues That Could Prevent Sudden Death in the Young. “By analyzing over 900 cases of sudden cardiac death in Sweden, scientists identified patterns like fainting spells, seizures, and abnormal heart rhythms that appeared before death. With better screening, especially among young athletes, many of these deaths might be preventable.”
INEXPENSIVE GIFT FOR SKETCHERS: Mr. Pen- Metal Mechanical Pencil Set with Lead and Eraser Refills. #CommissionEarned
SURPRISING: ‘Weekend Warriors’ get health benefits similar to steady exercisers. “As long as you get 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week — whether packed into one to two days or spread out — you can significantly reduce your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, cancer or other causes.”
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: New Car Performance Tech: Electrohydraulics Enable Software-Defined By-Wire Suspension.
FACEBOOK WINDS DOWN ITS CENSORSHIP PROGRAM:
By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the US will be officially over. That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers. We announced in January we’d be winding down the program & removing penalties. In place of fact checks, the first Community Notes will start…
— Joel Kaplan (@joel_kaplan) April 4, 2025
REPLACE YOUR OLD LAPTOP: Apple 2025 MacBook Air 13-inch Laptop. #CommissionEarned
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: He Had a Knife, Started a Gunfight. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week we have the Taco Bell paradox, how not to kill time at a Metro Rail station, and Pennsylvania Man’s instant karma.”
LEGENDARY HOLLYWOOD LEFTIST PINES FOR THE 1950s: Good Night, and Good Luck review: George Clooney makes his Broadway debut in a sleepy newsroom play.
“Good Night, and Good Luck,” the play that opened Thursday at the Winter Garden Theatre, is a big story with a huge set and an enormous star.
So it comes as a surprise that the impression left by the dusty historical drama as the audience pours out onto Broadway is so small and fleeting. Good Night, and What’s For Dinner?
The celeb du jour is George Clooney, who makes his Broadway debut — twice. He’s both the co-playwright and stars in the genteel role of Edward R. Murrow, the CBS newsman who waged a public battle with Communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.
“Good night, and good luck,” was the man’s famous sign-off.
That line is spoken many times in this attractive but empty show. I enjoyed looking at the massive and elaborate TV studio and retro suits for a while. But you can’t light a damp log.
W. Joseph Campbell responds, “In fact, Murrow was quite late in taking on McCarthy in the 1950s. Journos who called out McCarthy’s witch-hunting ways long before Murrow did in 1954 included columnist Drew Pearson, Richard Rovere of the New Yorker, and James Weschler of [the New York Post].
In 2010, Campbell wrote that Murrow was “No white knight–and not above the political fray:”
“Broadcast icon Edward R. Murrow was not a registered Democrat or Republican–he was an independent. Before courageously taking on Sen. Joe McCarthy, he was considered an anti-communist, supporting, for example, the execution of the Rosenbergs as spies for the Soviet Union. He wouldn’t have dreamed of giving donations to political candidates.”
To say Murrow he was studiously nonpartisan is to misread history. Murrow wasn’t so above the fray, and he was no white knight.
Notably, he donated time and expertise to helping the 1956 Democratic presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson.
In my latest book, Getting It Wrong, I cite A.M. Sperber, one of Murrow’s leading biographers, in noting how Murrow privately counseled Stevenson on “the finer points of speaking to the camera.”
Sperber wrote in her 1986 work, Murrow: His Life and Times, that although the 1956 presidential election was a foregone conclusion, that Republican incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower was certain to win, Murrow agreed “to help the Democrats.” Sperber called Murrow’s decision “a radical departure from his usual practice.”
The idea, Sperber wrote, was “to effect a liaison between the broadcaster and the candidate, to discuss the use of TV in the forthcoming campaign.”
She noted that the Murrow-Stevenson “connection was kept under wraps,” that the “understanding” between the broadcaster and Stevenson advisers was that Murrow “was acting as a private citizen” and that the matter was to be “kept quiet.”
Why did Murrow do it?
Murrow wasn’t the first Democratic Party operative with a byline — and he certainly wouldn’t be the last.
In 2017, Campbell added that “Murrow ‘was very late in confronting McCarthy’ and ‘did so only after other journalists had challenged the senator and his tactics for months, even years,’” creating what Campbell likes to a classic “media myth” that Clooney adopted into first a movie in 2005 and now a Broadway play. That being said, everyone in the media who lives to recreate those moments could have had their equivalent over the last four years with the endless number of failures of the Biden administration (not least of which, their lack of an actual functioning president), but chose to remain silent, and take one for the team. And so did Clooney! Until Obama apparently gave him his blessings to write a New York Times column condemning Joe’s senescence in his catastrophic debate with Trump last June.
And then there’s blacklist subtext of any film or play about McCarthy. That’s a topic that should never be touched by Hollywood again, since the industry has spent the last quarter century blacklisting anyone to the right of Stalin – and even blacklisting lefties who have made anti-blacklisting movies. Or as Glenn wrote in late 2020, “After a decade of seeing leftists doxxing people and getting them fired for expressing a forbidden opinion, I have to ask what’s their beef with Joe McCarthy?”
Heh, indeed. Still though, Clooney’s new play is a triumph on one level:
PRE-EMPT STATE GUN LAWS ENTIRELY TO PROTECT CIVIL RIGHTS: New Bill In Congress Targets States That Unfairly Tax Guns And Ammunition.
MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES: Chuck Schumer’s Political Career Could Be in Jeopardy.
IT WOULD ALMOST BE SHOCKING IF THEY FOUND SOMETHING THAT WASN’T: DOGE Discovers Giant Social Security Fraud.
BEEGE: The Menace of Malicious Compliance in Our Military.
The poster boys for the modern woke military might be long gone, but the damage they did and the subversive ideology they nurtured are still very much in situ within the rank and file that make the big machine run. They infest every nook and cranny of the military bureaucracy.
There have always been examples of the concept in government. For example, during a shutdown, the National Park Service will go to great lengths to close off open parks, like the monuments in D.C., that don’t require any National Park Service presence to begin with, just to make their point. In much the same way, they recently expressed their ire with the Trump administration by having only one person with keys and restroom rescue knowledge in all of Yosemite. See what happens to the park when the knuckle-dragging Luddites furlough him?
HAH! GOTCHA
This has been the case in the military since the moment Pete Hegseth issued his first directive.
Read the whole thing.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Hamas Quietly Drops Thousands of Deaths From Gaza War Casualty Lists.
STAY SAFE: GP BackGrip PRO, Headrest Car Passenger Hand Grip. #CommissionEarned
BLOFELD RESIGNS AS HEAD OF SPECTRE: Schwab Out As WEF Chair.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
In recent weeks, the Forum has been shaking up its leadership after the board received the findings of an investigation into the organization’s workplace culture. The investigation was prompted by a Wall Street Journal article last year that revealed allegations by employees of discrimination against women and Black people at the Forum, which is based in Geneva.
Schwab and the WEF originally denied any allegations of wrongdoing, but CEO Børge Brende refused to substantiate the findings but said that the organization would address the issues that had been raised. In a memo, Brende said, “Over these past months, we have taken time—time to pause, to listen, and to reflect. This period of reflection has been grounded in a desire not just to do things differently, but to do them better.” Other departures are said to include Schwab’s son, Olivier, who had been the organization’s managing director, Malte Goberson, who oversaw digital services, and chief legal officer Nicola Port.
“Schwab will remain in his position until a replacement is named,” Lincoln Brown of PJ Media writes. And you vill be instructed to still eat ze bugs until further notice, comrade.
No word yet how NPR is taking this news, but here’s how they freaked out over eating ze bugs in 2023: It’s NPR vs. NPR on ‘right-wing conspiracy theory’ about eating bugs.
