TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden stumbles through another campaign speech: “America is dead because of COVID-19.”
Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported in May: Biden Campaign Hires Interpreter To Translate His Speeches Into English.
In retrospect, Biden should have taken the Bee’s advice.
PEOPLE CAN JUST TAKE A PILL. WHY DON’T THEY JUST DO THAT? Add vitamin D to bread and milk to help fight Covid, urge scientists.
At dinner the other night, our waitress mentioned she’d been feeling fatigued and run-down, and it turned out her vitamin D level was 8. (30 is the low threshold of “normal,” I’m at 60, which is where my doc likes me to be). She’s supplementing now, she said, and a good thing.
Related: People who suffer the most severe Covid symptoms are more likely to be deficient in vitamin D – how to boost your intake. Food and sun are nice, but most people will need a supplement to get to the desirable level.
CHINA IMPRESSED BY MICHIGAN GOVERNOR’S TOTALITARIAN POLICIES: Michigan Bars, Restaurants Will Require Customer’s Names And Phone Numbers Starting Monday.
UPDATE: “Remember when that tech millionaire did a Biden ad about how Trump is killing his nightclub?”, Jim Treacher asks.
(Updated and bumped; classical reference in headline.)
20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Control of the Senate May Hinge on Georgia Runoff in January.
NONSENSE, WHEN TRUMP MENTIONED THIS ALL THE BEST PEOPLE INFORMED US THAT THE PRESIDENT HAS NO SUCH AUTHORITY:
HOWIE CARR: After Trump, the Lefty Deluge.
Nothing lasts forever, but I’m still praying for another four-year reprieve for America. Can we restore ourselves as a nation of laws rather than of men? Can we keep the mobs at bay for a few more years?
John Adams once wrote of the new republic: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Are we still a moral and religious people? I asked that question four years ago, and I repeat it this morning.
We’ll know the answer soon enough. If the answer is no, apres Trump, le deluge.
Read the whole thing.
DON’T GET COCKY: Wow! Massive Crowd for Trump Rally In Pennsylvania Floors Even Democrats.
THE CRISIS CONTINUES TODAY: Could you repeat that? Fixing the ‘replication crisis’ in biomedical research has become top priority.
MOSTLY PEACEFUL RIOTS: Leftist Agitators Target Conservative Groups in D.C. for Post-Election ‘Protests.’
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: The shame of the press.
FIRING THE COPY EDITORS WAS A MISTAKE: This Bloomberg story talks about “delegates,” but delegates are what you compete for in party nominations. “Electors” — as in the “Electoral College,” maybe Bloomberg has heard of that somewhere? — are what you seek in a general election.
Also, how can Ohio be tied if Biden is ahead by double digits and has everything locked up, as we’ve been told for weeks by Nate Silver and the rest?
IS IT JUST ME, OR ARE WE SEEING A CHANGE IN TONE ON THIS RACE? Nate Silver: “Without Pennsylvania, Biden becomes an underdog.”
SOME EASTERN WISDOM FOR THE ELECTION: If Biden Wins, It’s Karma.
DON’T, AS THEY SAY, GET COCKY: Biden May Have the Polls But Events Are Trending Toward Trump.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Up Your Long-Range Shooting Game.
HMM: Poll: Donald Trump set to win US presidency by electoral college landslide. “Donald Trump is on course to win four more years in the White House with a one point lead in the popular win, the final Democracy Institute poll for the Sunday Express has found. . . . Significantly, the President has, according to the latest findings, maintained a four point lead of 49 percent to 45 percent in the key swing states including Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It means he is on course to easily win the electoral college by 326 to 212 votes against his Democrat rival in a result which would shock the world even more than his astonishing defeat of Hilary Clinton in 2016. The Democracy Institute/Sunday Express poll has throughout the campaign been one of the few to predict a Trump victory since March. This is because unlike other polls it only looks at people identifying as likely voters instead of just registered to vote and it has tried to identify the shy Trump vote.”
Nice poll kid. Don’t get cocky.
MY MOTHER REMEMBERS THESE: When X-Rays Were All the Rage, a Trip to the Shoe Store Was Dangerously Illuminating.
GOOD PRACTICE FOR NEXT TIME: Scientists in Japan Just Found a Detailed Record of Earth’s Last Magnetic Switcharoo.
OLD AND BUSTED: The Second Gunman Theory.
The New Hotness? Another Hunter Biden Laptop? Why Yes, There Is!
THEY’LL BE WORSE BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVE FIGURED OUT THAT WE CAN’T TRUST PUBLIC HEALTH “EXPERTS:” Future pandemics will be worse without major strategy shift, study says.
NOT THE BABYLON BEE: CDC says cruises are allowed to set sail again … but passengers are not allowed on board.
WHEN THE HEADLINE SAYS IT ALL: Democrat-Run Hellholes Prepping for Election Night Violence Because Of Course.
UPDATE: Quod erat demonstrandum:
Update (From Ed): Business Owners Boarding Up In Case Party Of Love And Tolerance Loses, America’s Newspaper of Record reports.
(Updated and bumped.)
DISPATCHES FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU RATHERGATE:
● Shot: Ha! CBS News President Claims ‘We Are Unbiased, We Are Seeking the Truth.’
—NewsBusters, Friday.
● Chaser: CBS’s Scott Pelley Loses a Fight Rigged in his Favor.
—Instapundit, April 2nd, 2017.
—Climate Depot, today.
Wait, how are we still alive today? President [Obama] ‘has four years to save Earth.’
—The Grauniad, January 17, 2009.
THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR: Democrats Get Hysterical Over Pro-Trump Caravan Following Biden’s Bus in Texas.
THE DEAD HAVE ARISEN — AND THEY’RE FLEEING CHICAGO! Florida Busts Attempt To Register Over Fifty Dead Democrats.
ROGER KIMBALL: A Momentous Choice Faces Us Today as in 1776.
In 1776, the choices made by George Washington and other American patriots put the colonists on the road to victory. It was a long and difficult road, but the rewards—beginning with weighty perquisites of self-government—were rich.
America faces a kindred choice on Tuesday. You may or may not approve of Donald Trump’s style. But the substance of his leadership has yielded the most astonishingly successful first term in decades, maybe ever.
Read the whole thing.
IN THE MAIL: Thought Criminal.
GOSH, THAT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE. Desperate ‘Fact-Checkers’ Line Up to Help Biden: He Eulogized a KKK ‘Exalted Cyclops’ NOT a ‘Grand Wizard.’
ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE, STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY. AP Explains: Why France incites such anger in Muslim world.
ALL THAT MONEY WENT SOMEWHERE: Northwestern trustee, former Obama-Biden admin official behind Chicago’s $66M COVID hospital that treated just 38 people.
AN ARTICLE FOR OUR RUSSIAN TROLL COMMENTERS: Explosively old and cranky. A look at the numerous fires and explosions in Russian ammunition dumps and storage sites. Also some exported “explosive problems.”
ANGLING FOR FROGMEN: In the Philippine Sea, a USAF CV-22 Osprey conducts a search-and-rescue exercise with the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Why should The Strand survive?
As it happened, on my last trip The Strand had none of the books I was looking for. I wasn’t searching for any viciously right-wing tracts. The store had simply decided to go big and long on the ‘improving’ literature that it seeks to push on New Yorkers (Kendi, Coates, DiAngelo and all the rest) and it had done so at the expense of the variety and pluralism it once displayed. For instance near the front entrance on my last visit there stood a considerable quantity of the book (notorious to the readers of this publication) titled In Defense of Looting. Were I not on a guest in the country I should have picked up that whole steaming pile, walked out of the door and dumped them on the kerbside. For aside from believing that the author of that book should be taken at their word, it is quite something for a shop in a town that recently suffered an outbreak of looting to be prominently promoting a book which explains not only why ‘all cops are bastards’ but why the looting of other people’s businesses – businesses sometimes just as old and venerable as The Strand, incidentally – is not just fine but justified. Of course a store should stock a book. But what they push tells you where they stand.
So I understand why people might flock to The Strand when the call goes out to save it. They lingered there for many an hour in their student years. Which literary visitor to the city has not, in the past, left the place with an overweight luggage-case full of books? But The Strand is not the store that it once was. It has become another improbable victim of the culture wars, offering an ever-smaller selection of ‘good-for-you’ fare to a clearly dwindling number of customers. Sad, but not inevitable.
It’s telling that uber-woke books such as the aforementioned “’improving’ literature” and the now infamous In Defense of Looting don’t sound like they’re flying off the shelves even in far left Manhattan, the city with the reincarnation of Batman’s Marxist supervillain Bane as their mayor, and a shrinking population of true leftist believers as his constituency.
JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO, ALL THE SMART PEOPLE SAID HE WAS DOOMED FROM COVID BECAUSE HE WAS OLD AND OVERWEIGHT: White House Report Card: Trump leaves it all out there in his high-energy campaign.
IF YOU’RE RELYING ON SOCIAL MEDIA, YOU NEED TO CHOOSE AN ALTERNATIVE PLATFORM NOW: N.J. Women For Trump group, with 29K members, removed from Facebook days before election.
I BLAME RON DESANTIS: UK announces second lockdown as COVID-19 cases surge.
CAPITALISM: THE REALLY UNKNOWN IDEAL IN PORTLANDIA: Everything you need to know about Portland’s likely new socialist mayor can be found by looking at how she views “your” money.
I put “your” in scare quotes because it’s not entirely clear Portland mayoral candidate Sarah Iannarone believes it’s actually yours.
As a reminder, we’re talking about this Sarah Iannarone.
* * * * * * * *
Anyway, to really understand Iannarone, you have to understand her view of your money, and to do so I’m going to dissect one section from her “Housing For All” plan.
“There is a significant amount of money available across the spectrum of housing options flowing into the city from various pipelines…”
I like this visual, a pipeline. Sucking money from my wallet. (Although it is a bit surprising as I thought progressives were against pipelines.)
Note also that this money is “available.” Sounds kind of benign, like picking daisies from an open field, only it’s your field, and armed government agents have come to pick them.
“There is significant tax inequity between property owners in East Portland and the rest of the city that needs to be evaluated and corrected through assessment recalibration and possible implementation of a land value tax (LVT).”
“Tax inequity” that must be “evaluated” so as to have a “recalibration.”
Hint: your taxes are going up, confiscatorily.
Well, unless you live in East Liberty which houses most of Portland’s minority population and tends to suffer from higher poverty rates. Iannarone’s fondness for a Land Value Tax kind of gives away her agenda.
In other news from Portlandia, a Grauniad columnist discovers that the city wasn’t the socialist pipe dream she was expecting: We left the UK for Portland expecting a liberal dream. That wasn’t the reality. Unexpectedly!
The first surprise was the lack of non-white people. I later discovered that the 2010 census found Portland to be the whitest big city in the US. When our daughter started daycare, she came home and said she didn’t like her brown skin; she wanted to be white like the other kids. She was three. I felt like a fool for moving her out of a city where she would have been surrounded by people who look like her.
Living in Portland was also the first time I felt noticed for being in a mixed-race marriage. In rural Oregon, where you now regularly see Trump signs and bumper stickers, it’s become an unsaid agreement between my husband and I that I get out of the car as little as possible. He goes into the gas stations; he checks us into motels. I was horrified but not surprised when, during the fires, armed vigilantes set up “checkpoints” in small towns – claiming they were worried about “antifa looting”. They stopped drivers and asked them to identify themselves.
I write all of this as a brown person and a recent transplant. Racism for black people in Portland is far more pervasive and damaging. It’s visible in housing policy, police brutality and who gets to work where. In 1859, when Oregon joined the union, it was the only state to explicitly ban all black people living there. That legacy of racism has cast a long shadow. As recently as the 1990s, lenders in the state engaged in redlining (not giving people loans and mortgages because of where they live – which mainly affected the city’s small black population). There continues to be de facto racial segregation in schools. But, until this summer, Portland’s white population didn’t talk about it much.
Portland’s last Republican mayor served for a little over a year from September of 1979 to November of 1980. Prior to that, its last Republican mayor to serve a full term left office at the end of 1956. Why are Democrat monopoly cities such cesspits of racism?
(Classical reference in headline.)
GREAT MOMENTS IN DISPASSIONATE OBJECTIVITY: Sam Harris: ‘Osama bin Laden is far more understandable to me and far less reprehensible than Trump.’
Sam Harris is a famous atheist and a self-professed “rationalist,” but here he demonstrates that the Left’s hatred for Trump can race far beyond all the bounds of rationality and become cultlike in its perfervid intensity. Sam Harris has spoken critically about Islamic jihad violence in the past, but he allowed himself to be intimidated into silence about the root causes of that violence, and came out in opposition to any and all effective counter-jihad measures. Sam also recently unmasked himself as a fascist foe of the freedom of speech.
In light of all that, this revolting dive into the most fetid dumpster of Trump Hatred, and awe-inspiring example of moral myopia, is not altogether unexpected. But that doesn’t make it any less reprehensible.
* * * * * * * *
In an audio clip uploaded to his Facebook account on the 19th of February, he explains his position in detail. Sam Harris says, “I find Trump more despicable than I found Osama bin Laden… With Osama bin Laden, it’s just obvious to me that he could have been a mensch in some sense, right? He’s making serious sacrifices for ideas that he deeply believes in. He’s committed to a cause greater than himself.”
The deluded atheist continued, “I don’t doubt he had real ethical connections to the people in his life that he cared about. He’s a real person, right? And in some ways, he is kind of a moral hero in a very bad game. And so therefore, he’s kind of prototypically evil when viewed from my game. he’s a person of actual substance- he’s just committed to the wrong ends, whereas Trump is the negation of all those things.”
It is thus quite clear that ‘peak rational atheist’ Sam Harris believes that Donald Trump, under whose administration historic peace deals were signed between sworn enemies in the Middle East, is more reprehensible than the Islamic terrorist who brought down the Twin Towers and unleashed death, destruction and carnage across the world.
But Harris isn’t alone when it comes to that level of moral equivalence. Here’s Boston Globe opinion columnist Renee Graham yesterday:
“The top 3 best selling vehicles in America are pick-ups. Question to reporters: do you personally know someone that owns one?”, Ace of Spades’ John Ekdahl asked on Twitter at the beginning of 2017. As Sean Davis of the Federalist noted in his article on that seemingly innocuous tweet, “Watch A Bunch Of Journalists Freak Out After Being Asked If They Know Anybody Who Drives A Truck.”
And from an MSM journalist this past August: “Sales of mega-pickups, which have basically been deliberately designed to intimidate and kill pedestrians, are booming.”
THIS DOESN’T SOUND LIKE PEOPLE WHO EXPECT A BIG WIN: #ShutDownDC Plans to Target Republicans During Election-Week Protests.
DONALD SENSING: What will you do when they come for you?
IT’S AS RELIABLE AS THE POLLS: Forget the Polls: This Chinese Indicator Is Flashing ‘Trump.’ “The measure is unscientific at best. But merchants say sales of the president’s campaign merchandise at a major wholesale market are outstripping Biden’s.”
Don’t get cocky.
NATIONAL REVIEW: TRUMP? HELL, YES. “The case for Trump: Antics aside, he has many achievements, and a win by Biden would do vast harm.”
UNSURPRISING: Philadelphia Firefighters Union Confirms Trump Endorsement in Forced Recount.
Earlier in October, the union representing Philadelphia firefighters voted to endorse Donald Trump. This was no small undertaking, given the overwhelming support of most unions for Joe Biden. When some union members complained about the process, a second vote was conducted. Trump won that vote by a two-to-one margin. . . .
“It’s a huge win for Trump,” a source in the department told PJ Media. “Firefighters are overwhelmingly sacrificing future contract increases with a Democrat-run city to try and get Trump re-elected. It’s actually quite profound.” The vote and the revote further indicate how little support the radical Democrats and their police-defunding agenda get from first responders around the country.
It’s hard to expect firefighters to endorse a party of arsonists.
LEFTIES AT STANFORD TRY TO USE COVID-19 AS an excuse to get rid of the Hoover Institution.
NICK OWENS, RIP: Matt Mackowiak’s tribute is truly touching. And a useful insight into Washington’s 20-30 Something culture that is hardly different today from when I arrived in 1976.
HE’S RIGHT, ALAS:
The press can’t be trusted to play the role of honest interlocutor anymore, and that’s very destructive. But an honest interlocutor needs to be honest, and they lack the self-discipline and sense of professional mission to do that.
Meanwhile, these folks don’t sound like they’re preparing for an easy Biden victory: Celeb-packed apartments to be protected by armed guards on Election Day.
Related thoughts here.
2020 REALLY GOING ALL-OUT: Rare Halloween ‘Blue Moon’ is a spooky treat for us all. “Skywatchers, ghouls and (especially) werewolves take note: The moon will be full this Halloween night across the entire United States.”
CNN is not holding up well under the pressure: This weekend is nuts. Halloween, full moon, time change and just before the election. How do we cope?
“Dear diary…”
I LOVE THE “BUY AMMO” POPUP THAT ACCOMPANIES THIS DISCUSSION. VERY APPROPRIATE. Cultural Marxism’s Origins: How the Disciples of an Obscure Italian Linguist Subverted America.
THE BIDEN RIOTS ROLL ON: Handicapping the Post-Election Unrest.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Duke professor blames white men for white female professors impersonating women of color.
HOW CAN YOU TAKE THEM OFF THE ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST, JUST BECAUSE THEY AREN’T ENDANGERED ANYMORE? Trump Administration Takes Gray Wolves Off Endangered Species List, Drawing Protests From Conservation Groups.
IT’S COME TO THIS: ‘Is this a joke?’ Biden/Harris supporter in Texas bus tour called 911 on Trump caravan that tagged along & put them ‘in harm’s way.’
And Jake Tapper is on it! “CNN’s Jake Tapper noticed a thread from a Biden supporter who was there and not happy about it:”
As Jim Treacher adds, “Jake Tapper is not a journalist. He’s a Democratic Party operative.“
KATHY SHAIDLE IS ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS FOR HALLOWEEN: The Hilarious House of Frightenstein — How Vincent Price wound up on a low-budget Canadian kids’ horror show.
Price arrived at the modest TV studio, got into makeup and costume and was handed reams of doggerel poems about some crazy characters he’d never heard of before.
He’d read each piece once, put his head down, then look up at the camera’s red light and utter his lines perfectly in one take.
Next!
New makeup, new costume, same perfect delivery, hour after hour.
Finally, it was time for a break. The weary yet exhilarated crew turned off the cameras and lights.
Then they looked around and realized that Vincent Price had disappeared.
Oh well, they said to each other, what do you expect? He’s a big star and all. Plus he’s, like, 60 years old, so he probably went for a nap…
The studio door opened a few minutes later.
It was Vincent Price and a cab driver, hauling “two-fours” of beer from the nearby Brewer’s Retail.
He handed cold stubbies out to the cast and crew and regaled them with tales of old Hollywood, his days working with Karloff and Peter Lorre and Gene Tierney and Cecil B. DeMille and all the other greats he’d known.
Then he posed for photos with everybody individually.
On an overnight rush, these were blown up into 8 x 10s, which Price personally autographed for everyone at the station.
Over the course of four days, taping over 400 of these interstitials, Price never complained, blew a line or missed a mark.
In an era when standards of conduct were collapsing, Vincent Price insisted on behaving like the well-bred gentleman he so often portrayed on screen.
Read the whole thing. Exit quote: “You may not be aware that when it was syndicated in the states in the early 70’s it aired around 4:30 in half hour format. The story we heard was that it practically cleared the streets of New York of soft drug users so that they could freak out on the Wolfman segments!”
NEW STUDY FINDS GENDER WAGE GAP DISAPPEARING: Likely not quickly enough to satisfy the feminazis or the MSM, but disappearing nevertheless, according to Kay Hymowitz, writing for the Institute for Family Studies.
“WE’RE GONNA TURN TEXAS BLUE, YOU GUYS!” Democrats cancel Texas event after Trump supporters surround, follow Biden bus.
Note the angry terms used in the story, like “ambush.” Heck, it was a mostly peaceful protest of Biden’s candidacy. Protest is patriotic, right?
LOCKDOWN PUTS US BACK TO DISEASE CASTES: Jeffrey Tucker of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) describes how caste systems functioned to insulate the elite from direct exposure to pandemics. Elites can work from home, most of the rest of us have to leave our houses with some frequency. See where this is going?
YOU EXPECT TO ENCOUNTER A BEAR? 5 Reasons to Choose a 10 mm for Self Defense.
DENVER JUDGE DOUBTS SECURITY GUARD’S SELF-DEFENSE CLAIM IN PROTEST SHOOTING, REFUSED TO REDUCE BAIL FROM $500,000: Matthew Dolloff is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Lee Keltner.
Earlier, from Jim Treacher: Trump Supporter Shot Dead in Denver, Media Tiptoes Around It.
So: Matthew Dolloff is a private security guard who doesn’t have a license, he wasn’t wearing anything that identified him as security, and the company that was supposed to have employed him says he doesn’t work for them.
If that seems strange to you, then you have a more curious nature than most of the national news media. They’re tiptoeing around the story, giving it just enough coverage to cover their own asses.
That’s because the shooter is on their team. Despite the Denver Police’s initial claim, Dolloff’s social media history is full of leftist stuff…
Read the whole thing.
Flashback: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History. And additional examples of leftist violence and eliminationist rhetoric at the link.
WHO DO YOU THINK WE THINK WE ARE? Babylon Bee retracts retraction after US Navy confirms USA Today fact check is false.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: International Space Station marks 20 years of humans on board.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE…PRETTY CONSISTENT, ACTUALLY:
Why is the Democratic Party still a cesspit of racism, even in the 21st century?
NEWSWEEK: Why I’m Voting for Donald Trump.
IT MUST KILL THEM TO HAVE TO REPORT THIS RIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION: American hostage Philip Walton rescued in dramatic military operation. “An American citizen abducted last week in Niger has been rescued during a high-risk U.S. military raid in neighboring Nigeria, officials told ABC News early Saturday. The mission was undertaken by elite commandos as part of a major effort to free the U.S. citizen, Philip Walton, 27, before his abductors could get far after taking him captive in Niger on Oct. 26, counterterrorism officials told ABC News.”
FLASHBACK: Why oh why is NY Governor Andrew Cuomo being praised for his coronavirus response? Governor Andrew Cuomo does not deserve kudos for his COVID-19 policies. He put the elderly at great risk. And by “great risk,” I mean he killed thousands.
Related: Justice Department Ramps Up Inquiry into NY Care Home Deaths.
The demand ratchets up pressure on Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo after months of bipartisan criticism that the state’s official tally of 6,722 dead at long-term care facilities is probably off by thousands. That’s because New York, unlike nearly every other state, counts only residents who died on a nursing home’s property and not those who died after being taken to a hospital. Cuomo’s administration has repeatedly refused to release such nursing home data to lawmakers and the media, including a public-records request from The Associated Press dating back to May. . . .
An AP analysis in August found New York is probably undercounting nursing home deaths by thousands, noting that a separate federal count since May that included resident deaths in hospitals was 65 percent higher than the comparable state count.
Cuomo, who has generally been praised for flattening the curve in a state hit with a nation-topping 33,400 deaths, has nonetheless faced unrelenting criticism over his handling of nursing homes, particularly a controversial March 25 order that sent thousands of recovering COVID-19 patients from hospitals into nursing homes at the height of the pandemic.
New York’s method of counting allows Cuomo to boast that his state has a lower percentage of nursing home deaths compared to other states.
A friend suggests that this investigation will go nowhere if Biden is elected. My cynical response is that it all depends on which Democrats see Cuomo as a threat and want to knock him out.
COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Hospital floors frequently contaminated with antibiotic resistant bacteria.
FLASHBACK: Middle East peace accord, economic recovery and space travel: There is still good news. “It might sometimes feel as if the news media, with all their depressing and divisive coverage, are waging psychological warfare against their audience. But out in the real world, good things are happening.”
RIP SEAN CONNERY: Iconic James Bond Pioneer Actor Dies at 90.
Sean Connery, the most iconic James Bond actor, is now having drinks with the Man Upstairs. The acting giant passed away in his sleep overnight in the Bahamas. His loss is tragic, but he lived to the age of 90.
Before his iconic roles as James Bond, Indiana Jones’ father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), and more, Connery worked as a milkman, laborer, artist’s model, bodybuilder, and sailor in the British Royal Navy. At the age of 23, he chose acting over becoming a professional soccer player.
Connery pioneered the role of 007 in Dr. No (1962). He embodied the iconic British spy at the height of the Cold War, launching the James Bond series that continues to this day.
In his 1990 book Medium Cool: The Movies of the 1960s, Ethan Mordden wrote of Connery as Bond, “Once in an era there is perfect casting. Greta Garbo as Ninotchka, Margaret O’Brien as Tootie Smith, Johnny Sheffield as Bomba the Jungle Boy—and Connery as 007.”
TO BE FAIR, THE GRAY LADY’S BEEN UNHINGED FOR QUITE SOME TIME: New York Times opinion section comes unhinged ahead of the 2020 election.
What shameful caterwauling. If ever there was an example of the obscene privilege of the elite, this appallingly self-indulgent and self-important collaboration by the New York Times is surely it.
Kristof, Bruni, and Cohen have a combined 181 years among them on this planet. That is to say nothing of the other columnists who participated in the New York Times project, including Gail Collins, 74, and Maureen Dowd, 68.
They lived through Abscam, the Iran-Contra scandal, the Waco massacre, Bill Clinton perjuring himself, the launch of the Forever Wars, the federal government’s culpability in the financial crisis, the Veterans Affairs scandal, the NSA spying scandal, and the extrajudicial droning of American citizens.
But it was not until this administration that the United States lost its “innocence,” its “persuasion,” its “pride,” and its standing as a democratic world power?
So if America only lost its “innocence,” “pride,” and its standing as a democratic world power under Trump, that means no one at the Times believes its “1619 Project,” either. Has anyone checked in on Nikole Hannah-Jones to see if she’s had another temper tantrum?
CLAY TRAVIS: Why I’m Voting for Donald Trump.
IN THE MAIL: From David Clinton, Keeping Up: Backgrounders to all the big technology trends you can’t afford to ignore.
ROGER SIMON: The Two Necessary Approaches for Ending Big Tech.
The captains of Big Tech who appeared before a Senate committee a few days ago revealed once again what a pernicious force they are.
Moral narcissists of the highest order, they are all the more dangerous because they think they are good. They are convinced they are helping the world, making sure we in the great unwashed are not propagandized by what they deem disinformation or misinformation, when in actuality they are making a frontal assault on free speech via various forms of censorship.
This reached the level of Theater of the Absurd when Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, responding to Senator Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), testified that Holocaust denial did not meet Twitter’s definition of misinformation while, evidently, the New York Post’s reporting on Tony Bobulinski’s widely-authenticated emails did.
Dorsey also told Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) his site had not censored tweets from the president when they had done so literally dozens of times.
The most flagrant Orwellian prevarication, however, was when Dorsey stated Twitter had no influence on elections. (Why then would he bother to censor the New York Post?)
Four legs good, two legs bad, anyone?
Google and Facebook are at least as disturbing and arguably vastly more powerful.
In a manner even the Chinese might envy, “The ends justify the means” has come to America via unseen algorithms dictating what is displayed on our laptops, cellphones and, soon, just about everything else.
But what do we do about it?
I propose a two-pronged attack, one legislative and one personal/consumer-oriented. The latter, I believe, may ultimately be more effective, but both are necessary.
From the legal standpoint, Sens. Blackburn, Joshua Hawley (R-Mo.) and several others, some Democrats, are attempting to overhaul Section 230 that shields sites like Facebook and Twitter from being sued for the content to which they have linked.
Written over twenty years ago, the early Paleolithic Age in internet terms, the authors of this rule could not have conceived to the degree these sites have become publishers themselves.
In fact, they are now, in essence, the managing editors of the world’s news and therefore the gatekeepers of an overwhelming percentage of global information. In a sense, the truth is what they say it is. What could be more powerful than that in a digital age?
We should adamantly support a rewriting of 230, allowing these behemoths to be sued just as much as the rest of us residents of Grub Street. It’s possible this can be accomplished, but, unfortunately, as no doubt some of those legislators would agree, that is not going to be nearly enough.
A serious look at rewriting anti-trust legislation should be in the cards, but without a Trump victory, that is highly unlikely. And even with one, it will be tremendously difficult, given the deepest pockets in Washington—the deepest pockets anywhere actually— belong to the tech giants. And since “money is the mother’s milk of politics,” well, you know the rest….
Consumers
Which leads me, my fellow citizens, to that second prong, to what we can and must do—the consumer approach.
We can leave Google, Twitter, and Facebook, pretty much in that order. If there are enough of us, we can cut their profits and build competition.
For some, maybe many, of us that means our lives will change radically—or at least we fear it will. But as the saying goes, fortune favors the daring.
The lockout of the New York Post is a reminder that Abandoning the decentralized Blogosphere for the walled gardens of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube was a huge mistake, particularly for conservatives. Somebody should write a book about the reasons why.
