BRYAN PRESTON: Did Frozen Wind Turbines Impact the Texas Freeze? Here’s the Data.
JIM TREACHER: Baltimore Activist Wants to Pay Criminals Not to Kill People. “I like this idea, obviously. You can catch more flies with a carrot than a stick, or something. But why rely on the government to do it? It should be privatized. It’s up to each of us to make the world a safer place. Here’s what I suggest: Go around your neighborhood and remind everybody that it’s a nice place and it would be a shame if something… happened to it. You never know when somebody’s gonna get shot, do ya? But for a very reasonable price of $1,000 a month, you’ll agree not to shoot anybody. Is that really too much to pay to ensure your family’s safety? Who could refuse such an offer?”
Heh, indeed.™
WOKE STUPIDITY COMES TO AUSTRALIA: Governor General’s staff to be asked to do woke ‘privilege walk’ so they can identify how entitled they are while being asked bizarre questions like ‘were your parents ever addicted to drugs?’
Proper response: “I’m entitled not to be subjected to this idiocy.”
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT MONOPOLY INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM AND SEXISM? Was 60 Minutes TV’s Most Toxic Workplace?
[Ira Rosen, the author of Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at ‘60 Minutes,’] also writes that Wallace regularly peppered colleagues with questions about their sex lives; lashed out at them for no good reason; grabbed the bottoms and breasts of women who worked in the office; pulled them onto his lap; and snapped bra straps.
“The verbal harassment I experienced from Mike Wallace and other TV big shots was, in a word, criminal,” Rosen writes. He says he stuck it out for so long “in part out of fear, but mostly out of ambition.”
It is depressing to think that a “60 Minutes”-worthy story — on the ingrained culture of harassment at a cultural institution — took place at the nation’s most prestigious and most popular TV newsmagazine. The writer Sally Quinn ventured into this territory in “We’re Going to Make You a Star,” a 1975 memoir about her stint at CBS News. She wrote that Hewitt tried to sabotage her after she said no to his advances. (The reviews were vicious.)
In a 1991 article for Rolling Stone, the journalist Mark Hertsgaard reported that Hewitt and Wallace routinely harassed women in the workplace. In 2017, “60 Minutes” tried to obscure its past. Richard Zoglin, a biographer, was hired by Simon & Schuster, a publisher then owned by the CBS Corporation, to write a book on the show’s history in time for its 50th anniversary. After he started asking about the treatment of women on staff, he was replaced by a new author: Jeff Fager, who had succeeded Hewitt as the show’s top producer.
Rosen does not go into the book fiasco but does note that CBS fired Charlie Rose, a “60 Minutes” correspondent and a co-anchor of “CBS This Morning,” after a number of women had accused him of sexual harassment. He also includes the 2018 firing of Fager, whose career ended after he sent a threatening text message to a CBS reporter who was preparing a “CBS Evening News” segment that dealt with allegations of sexual harassment against Fager himself. (The problem went to the very top: The CBS Corporation also fired the company’s chief executive, Leslie Moonves, after a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment and sexual assault.)
The above New York Times review doesn’t mention if this infamous moment in Mike Wallace’s career appears in Rosen’s book. As described by the late Roger Ailes, someone else who understood the blending of theater and journalism even more than Hewitt and Wallace:
Recognize that any time you are in the presence of a newsperson, the conversation is fair game for the record. Jimmy Carter’s famous confession that he sometimes had lust in his heart for women other than his wife was uttered to a Playboy magazine journalist as he was leaving Carter’s home at the conclusion of the formal interview. Even Mike Wallace, big-game hunter of the unguarded moment, got caught in this snare. As recounted on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal by TV critic Daniel Henninger in March of 1981, Wallace:
was interviewing a banker in San Diego about an alleged home improvement fraud involving mainly black and Hispanics, who supposedly had signed contract they couldn’t understand, which led to foreclosures on their home mortgages.The bank hired a film crew of its own to record the interview with Mr. Wallace. The bank apparently left its recorder running during a break in the CBS interview, and the tape has Mr. Wallace saying, in reply to a question about why the black and Hispanic customers would have signed their contracts, “They’re probably too busy eating their watermelon and tacos.”
When the Los Angeles Times got wind of this indiscretion and reported it, there was at least a minor uproar from reporters and others about Wallace’s “racially disparaging joke”. Wallace ultimately pleaded “no bias”, admitting that over time he’d privately told jokes about many ethnic groups but that his record “speaks for itself”. Henninger added, “Needless to say, this has to be the most deliciously lip-smacking bit of irony to pop out of the oven in a long time. Here we have the dogcatcher cornered. The lepidopterist pinned. The preacher in flagrante delicto. This is the fellow who has imputed all manner of crimes against social goodness to a long lineup of businessmen and bureaucrats. From here on out, all future victims of Mr. Wallace can take some small comfort in knowing that although they may stand exposed as goof-offs, thieves and polluters, he’s the guy who made the crack about the watermelons and tacos.”
Eventually, as the cost of the equipment Wallace used for his stings became affordable to all, James O’Keefe and others on the right would begin to employ the same investigative techniques that 60 Minutes pioneered, only aimed at Wallace’s fellow leftists. As I wrote in 2011: Investigative Journalism: It’s All Fun and Games until the MSM Gets Stung.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Time to End Hostile Powers’ Influence Operations at American Universities.
LAYERS AND LAYERS OF FACT CHECKERS AND EDITORS: New York Times suggests that The Rush Limbaugh Show’s Bo Snerdley might not even exist. The Gray Lady “is erasing the black man who worked with Rush Limbaugh.”
To be fair, there are fewer and fewer layers each day: Getting the Hell Out of Dodge.
NASA’S PERSEVERANCE ROVER LANDS ON MARS.
Hopefully no one in mission control is wearing a problematic shirt.
SOUNDS LIKE GOOD MARKETING! He started a covid-19 vaccine company. Then he hosted a superspreader event.
DAVID MARCUS: The Reform Party Roots Of The New GOP Are Its Future. “Republican voters will not go back to the neoliberal GOP of the past 30 years, and if that means losing some elections, it means losing some elections.”
“Trumpism,” for lack of a better word, is a fusion between conservatives tired of the do-nothing GOP Establishment, and blue-collar Americans without a home in the newly Woke Democrat party.
It can be a powerful combination, and it’s here to stay.
GOYA’S DECEMBER EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Daily Beast Editor Accuses Tucker Of Adding Googly Eyes To AOC, Turns Out It’s Just Her Face.
KIA AND HYUNDIA/GENESIS ARE BECOMING A REAL THREAT TO MERCEDES, AUDI, ETC.: Kia K8 Is an Elegant-Looking Large Sedan.
THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN TEXAS: Texas Electric Reliability Council Removes Board Members From Website as Their Residencies Are Questioned. “About a third of its members don’t even live in Texas.”
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: School Board Mocks Parents Who Support Reopening: ‘They Want Their Babysitters Back.’
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): One thing we’ve learned from the pandemic: Not only are public school teachers not essential workers, they don’t even regard themselves as essential workers.
LIVE IN FIVE… FOUR… THREE… ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere’ with Kruiser, Preston, VodkaPundit.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: New ACLU Head Has a Civil Rights Problem Back Home. “The American Civil Liberties Union’s new president, Deborah Archer, is a faculty member at New York University’s law school, where she runs its civil rights clinic. But NYU Law has its own civil rights problem, which is why I filed a Title IX complaint against NYU.”
UNEXPECTEDLY! Biden Open To Considering Reparations Depending On Progress Congress Makes On Study.
Racial reparations is a widely unpopular proposal in the United States which, even immediately following the racially charged death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, only 20 percent of Americans supported.
Psaki made the remarks during an exchange with a reporter who brought up that Biden said during his campaign that he supported a study for reparations. “Does the President support the legislation?” the reporter asked. “He stopped short of saying that during the campaign. Would he sign that if it came to his desk?”
“Well, he’s supported a study of reparations, which is I believe is what’s being discussed, and studying the continuing impacts of slavery, which is being discussed in this hearing on H.R. 40, I believe it is,” Psaki responded. “And he continues to demonstrate his commitment to take comprehensive action to address the systemic racism that persists today. Obviously, that is — having that study is a part of that, but he has signed an executive order on his first day, which would begin to deliver on his commitment to having an across-government approach to addressing racial inequality and making sure equity is a part of his entire policy agenda.”
I’ve noticed in recent weeks that Democrats have been using “equity” where they usually use “equality.”
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT INSTEAD OF WINNING WARS:
A WORTHY CAUSE: Donate Ammunition for the FASTER Program.
Independence Institute’s FASTER (Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response) program trains armed school staffers to stop school violence quickly and administer medical aid immediately.
In order to maintain their certification, these staffers need to meet annual training requirements, and in order to do so, they need ammunition. In fact, depending on the level, FASTER classes require between 500-800 rounds of ammunition for each class member.
Economic uncertainty and the real threat of anti-gun action by the federal and state government has made ammunition scarce and unaffordable.
So, we are asking for your help to give ammunition via a first-of-its-kind Ammo Drive. Our goal is 50,000 rounds—enough to get us through the 2021 FASTER Colorado training season.
Details on how to give at the link.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: The Texas energy blame game.
Speaking of which: Andrew Cuomo’s brother Chris Cuomo shames Ted Cruz for not being ‘present and responsive’ during a crisis.
FORGET FIXING AMERICA, LET’S KEEP TRUMP OUT OF ARLINGTON CEMETERY: That’s the mindset of the 13 House Democrats co-sponsoring H.R. 484, the “No Glory for Hate Act of 2021” that bars former President Donald Trump from being buried at Arlington National Cemetary.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: People with different personalities have different risks of dying. “The study sheds new light on why people who are more conscientious tend to live longer.”
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-MONOPOLY INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF SEXISM? Biden’s Alma Mater Bans Men From Posts And Scholarships, Just For Being Men.
PROCUREMENT: How Colombia’s drug cartels almost bought a Soviet submarine.
In 2019, footage of a U.S. Coast Guard interdiction of a homemade drug smuggling submarine took the world by storm, and for good reason. As we watched one of the baddest dudes we’re ever apt to see anywhere outside of a movie pounding on the hatch of the mostly submerged sub, many of us were shocked to learn that drug cartels actually have their own submarines.
What may surprise you more is that these amateur submarines were really a consolation prize for drug smugglers out of Colombia. Their first choice? An actual Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine. What’s even crazier, however, is that the Russians seemed to be more than happy to sell them one.
None of this is at all surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention, but many of the details are new and interesting.
CHARLES LIPSON: Earmarks rise from the dead in the Democratic Congress.
EXTENDED LOCKDOWNS ARE SUCH A BAD IDEA EVEN THE W.H.O. HAS DENOUNCED THEM: Philadelphia study links COVID-19 lockdowns, gun violence spike.
BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’s ONLINE: Biden’s ‘Conservative’ Supporters Need To Defend His Partisan, Hard-Left First Month.
(Classical reference in headline.)
THE NEW ANTI-RACISM LOOKS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE THE OLD RACISM: NYC Principal Urges Parents to Become ‘White Traitors,’ ‘White Abolitionists.’
WE DON’T NEED NO EDUCATORS: Open schools or give the money to parents. “If a district offers only remote classes, parents could use public-school funds to move their children to a school of their choice, according to legislation introduced in Maryland, Illinois, Utah and Georgia, reports Patrick Hauf of Capitol News Service.”
A BILLION HERE, A BILLION THERE, AND PRETTY SOON, YOU’RE TALKING REAL MONEY: New ‘COVID’ Legislation Contains $300 Billion in Unrelated Spending, Budget Watchdog Warns.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Is That a Mask in Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Is there a point where the public’s right to know and the public’s desire to know could collide like one of those Extinction Level Event asteroids into the Earth?
Answer: Yes, and the only thing we’re missing is Bruce Willis.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- CNN gently factchecks “four false statistical claims” by Joe Biden
- Rahm Emanuel to go from CCP booster to ambassador to the CCP?
- The true threat: “Super-sized” carnivorous mice
Bonus Sanity: The disastrous truth about Texas.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
“IT’S THE MOST INNOCENT FORM OF WHORING I KNOW:” How Orson Welles Became the Most Infamous Pitchman in Booze History.
BECAUSE HE’LL SAY ANYTHING. NEXT QUESTION? Why Did Biden Say ‘We Didn’t Have’ a COVID-19 Vaccine When He Took Office?
CHANGE: FAA Releases Remote ID, the Largest Regulatory Change for Drones In Years.
The FAA has long wanted to equip drones with a digital license plate. The idea is that government agencies, law enforcement and the general public should be able to track drones that are flying overhead. . . .
The drone will broadcast its serial number during flight. It will also include information on the location of the drone, its altitude, speed, and direction of flight. In addition, either the takeoff location or the controller’s location will also be made available as part of what the FAA calls the “message.” Most likely, either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth will be used to broadcast the signal.
People on the ground who are equipped with a smartphone will be able to use an app to receive the message and find information about the aircraft and the pilot. The FAA, law enforcement and other federal agencies will also have the ability to cross-reference the license plate number and access the pilot’s personal information. The general public won’t be able to do that.
Most existing drones can likely receive a firmware update and be able to broadcast the signal without additional cost. Older noncompliant drones can attach a module to their drone that will broadcast the signal.
What do you think?
SO VERY WOKE: Amazon changed traffic light timing during union drive, county officials say. “As part of its ongoing fight over an Alabama warehouse’s efforts to unionize, Amazon reportedly changed the timing of a traffic light outside the warehouse, according to reporting by More Perfect Union. Union organizers at the site had previously accused the company of altering the timing so that pro-union workers would not be able to canvass workers while stopped at the light.”
BIDEN’S RETURN TO NORMALCY: Nearly 5,000 National Guard troops to stay in DC over concerns of potential violence in March.
POLITICS IS VIOLENCE: Politics Is Seeping Into Our Daily Life and Ruining Everything.
21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Are People Falling in Love With Their Peloton Instructors?
QUESTION ASKED: Will Boeing Become The Next McDonnell Douglas? “It has been nearly 25 years since Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged. Given Boeing’s significant engineering cuts, program execution problems, clear prioritization of shareholder returns, extremely uncertain product development road map and deteriorating market share outlook, it is time to consider whether Boeing Commercial Aircraft (BCA) is destined to share Douglas’ fate. Three criteria are key.”
Put the engineers back in charge.
SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Valparaiso shuts down Facebook comments amid backlash for ditching Crusaders mascot.
RAY BRADBURY DIDN’T WRITE FAHRENHEIT 451 AS A HOW-TO GUIDE: BLM Activist Working At Library Fired After Allegedly Burning Library Books By Trump, Coulter. Now He’s Claiming Racial Discrimination.
IMPERMANENCE OF THE PAST: “Fully recovered lawyer” Mark Pulliam, writing at Law & Liberty, cogitates about how quickly freedom can be lost when parents don’t pass along to their off-spring knowledge of and appreciation for the facts of the nation’s history.
But the passage is made doubly difficult by systematic and sustained efforts to erase the heritage and its memory. Pulliam’s observations about the campaign led by Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush to “reimagine” the Alamo, the remarkable shrine of Texas liberty, are thus especially on point:
“Alamo defenders, adamant that the shrine to Texas valor needed no ‘reimagining,’ ultimately thwarted Bush’s plans after an extended fight — at least for now. Revisionist historians risibly demonize the Alamo as a ‘symbol of whiteness’ and even ‘the largest statue to the Confederacy in this country.’ The battle is not over.”
OUCH: Ex-Stadia developers dish on Google’s mismanagement and poor communication.
Google recently killed its only in-house Stadia game development studio, Stadia Games and Entertainment (SG&E), after building up the studio for only two years. In an industry where even established game studios take several years to ship a product, this was a breathtakingly fast pace for building and tearing down a game development studio. Kotaku got in touch with some of the 150+ staffers who were dismissed from Google’s studio, and they paint a picture of a dysfunctional work environment plagued by dishonest communication and mismanagement.
According to the report, developers at the studio were “shocked” by the sudden shutdown, since, only a week earlier, Stadia’s leading executive, game industry veteran Phil Harrison, told the group “[SG&E] has made great progress building a diverse and talented team and establishing a strong lineup of Stadia exclusive games.” The one-week flip-flop was “part of an apparent pattern of Stadia leadership not being honest and upfront with the company’s developers,” according to Kotaku, adding that many developers “upended their lives and careers to join the team.”
The report says Stadia’s developers found out about the studio closure at “almost the same time as everyone else.” Stadia’s developers had to wait three days before Harrison was available for a Q&A conference call, which the report describes as “contentious.” The most chilling line in the report details Harrison’s response to a question asking why the Studio was “making great progress” one week and then fired the next: “When asked what changed from the week prior, Harrison admitted nothing had and told those on the call, ‘We knew.'”
Nobody should be shocked when Google cancels anything out of the blue.
OUT: SCIENCE. IN: SACRIFICE TO APPEASE THE GODS OF WOKENESS. Harvard researchers claim COVID-19 wouldn’t have been so bad if US paid reparations.
SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Biden Removes ‘We the People’ Petitioning From White House Website.
The system has been around for many years. At any given time, hundreds of petitions were active. If you get 100,000 signatures, the White House is supposed to give an answer. You may remember that there was an active “Free Assange” petition that the Obama Administration was obligated to answer (and gave a bad answer).
When Trump took office, he briefly discontinued it but put it back up after a media uproar.
Now it appears the Biden White House has removed it.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for another uproar.
NO RUSH, IT WAS MY PRIVILEGE: My conversation with Rush Limbaugh.
I PREDICT ANOTHER ‘REMARKABLY SCANDAL-FREE’ ADMINISTRATION:Biden’s Bedtime and Adorable PDAs Give the Corporate Media All the Feels.
DECLINE OF TRUST: Thousands of service members saying no to Covid vaccine: Some Army units are seeing as few as one-third agree to the vaccine.
Service leaders have vigorously campaigned for the vaccine. They have held town halls, written messages to the force, distributed scientific data, posted videos, and even put out photos of leaders getting vaccinated.
For weeks, the Pentagon insisted it did not know how many troops were declining the vaccine. On Wednesday they provided few details on their early data.
When you put a politicized, flip-flopping weasel like Anthony Fauci out front as your representative, people will trust you less. That’s disastrous for public health, whose chief asset is public trust, but public health has chosen politics over doing its job well, as have most of our institutions.
FACEBOOK IS AN UNTRUSTWORTHY PARTNER AND NO ONE — GOVERNMENT OR BUSINESS — SHOULD RELY ON IT: Facebook’s Australian news ban wreaks havoc on government pages.
COVID WOULD BE THE LEAST OF HIS PROBLEMS: Covid: Man offered vaccine after error lists him as 6.2cm tall. “A man in his 30s with no underlying health conditions was offered a Covid vaccine after an NHS error mistakenly listed him as just 6.2cm in height. Liam Thorp was told he qualified for the jab because his measurements gave him a body mass index of 28,000.”
EFFORTS AT UNPERSONING SO FAR A FAILURE: Republicans choose Trump over Reagan as ‘best president’ ever 2-1.
The greatest power of the media has always been to demoralize and intimidate people on the right. This suggests it’s not going very well. No wonder they’re crying in their gluten-free beer.
REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: Why Biden’s New Dawn of Net-Zero Is Looking Like a Dark Day for Labor.
Last Labor Day, candidate Joe Biden made an impassioned pitch to leaders and members of the AFL-CIO, America’s largest labor federation. Stressing that “the great American middle class was built by unions,” he jabbed his finger in the air for emphasis as he promised, “I’m going to be the strongest labor president you have ever had,” drawing a smile from his longtime ally and friend, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
But Biden has also declared climate change the nation’s greatest challenge and is supporting strategies that could cost struggling union members hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs that will not be easily replaced. From interviews with labor leaders, RealClearInvestigations has found that President Biden may be hard-pressed to balance the competing demands of these two core constituencies — unions and environmentalists. How he addresses those tensions will shape his much-anticipated climate plan to cut carbon emissions.
As a famous man once said, never underestimate Joe’s ability to f*ck things up. Plus:
The global imbalance in fighting climate change also fuels the grievances of fossil-fuel workers who believe they are getting a raw deal. China, which burns about half the world’s coal, plans to expand its coal power fleet in coming years and increase carbon pollution as the U.S. and European Union slowly shave output. While global emissions dropped sharply last year because of the COVID lockdowns, they are expected to rise again, with coal as the biggest source.
The nonbinding Paris Agreement can’t compel China to change course, so Biden is banking on the power of the U.S. example.
Sure, that’ll work.
Related: Gentry Party: The Democrats Now Represent The One Percenters.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Rush Limbaugh’s ‘No-Yield’ Authenticity Won’t Be Forgotten. “As has been noted by every person in conservative media since yesterday, we have a platform because of Rush Limbaugh. It’s so much more than just that though. Rush could have easily been the detached godfather of conservative media, and we would all be giving him props for that. But almost everyone on this side has a personal story about how Rush inspired or or motivated them.”
JUSTICE FOR DEAD GRANNIES: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo under investigation for nursing home deaths.
UPDATE: The first link above, at ABC News, has gone dead for some reason. Here’s the Albany Times-Union story it appears to have been based on.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a different ABC News link to what appears to be the same story.
BIDEN’S $1.9 TRILLION ‘STIMULUS’ WILL SHRINK THE ECONOMY: Hans Bader notes that even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agrees that in the long run, the Biden plan will shrink the economy.
IT ISN’T WHAT YOU THINK: Donald Trump’s official app has been suspended from the Google Play Store. “Google has just taken down the Official Trump 2020 App from the Play Store. The company has since explained to us that the app ceased functioning correctly, and, after multiple attempts to contact the developer regarding these problems, Google elected to follow its policy to remove non-functional apps from the Play Store. Android Police can confirm that prior to the takedown, the app hung and could not load content, reporting connectivity issues”
It makes sense that the Trump 2020 app wasn’t being tended to. The question is whether there will be a Trump 2024 app.
I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN STATUE TOPPLING WAS ONLY ABOUT CONFEDERATE STATUES:“Mayor Lori Lightfoot is confronting the ‘hard truths of Chicago’s racial history,’ launching a public process to review the fate of 41 statues and other monuments, including some of former presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley.”
It was only 12 years ago that Obama modeled the run-up to his inauguration on Lincoln.
GRAFT, AND CONTROL, FOR THE POLITICAL CLASS. THAT WAS ALWAYS WHAT IT WAS ABOUT. “If the Affordable Care Act Can’t Cover a Little Girl Battling Cancer, What the Hell Good Is It?”
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY? IS AMERICA RACIST? I doubt that there is a more tolerant nation anywhere on the globe or in history, but that fact doesn’t stop the Hate America Crowd from constantly telling us we are all a bunch of bigots.
Having endlessly heard that accusation for so long, my temptation is increasingly just to tell the accusers to bugger off. Here, however, the Colson Center’s Ryan Bomberger offers four more diplomatic responses to proponents of Critical Race Theory.
February 17, 2021
WHAT AUSTIN, TEXAS TEACHES ABOUT PREPPING. “This video is a couple of days old. This line was about a mile long as guessed by the videographer. There are no more lines like that because the grocery stores are out of food.”
Plus:
My family member is safe and sound with copious supplies for everything, and I told him that the only people who would have been prepared for something like this is preppers. He responded that people do in fact listen to the government and that had a warning come out in time to concern yourself with potable water, run water into bathtubs, get freeze dried foods, visit the grocery stores, get batteries, get medical kits, stock up on ammunition, get charcoal and be prepared to grill, have enough water to flush toilets, and so on and so forth, the people would have responded.
I told him that he had misunderstood what I said. I meant that the only people who worry about preparations like this without being told to by the government is preppers, and that he was prepared because we talked about this sort of thing before.
He agreed. Most of America is 24-48 hours from starvation and dehydration. If the water system and/or electric grid goes down, people must be prepared for that. Preparation isn’t just for the Northwestern redoubt, with all due respect to the folks at the Survival Blog. In fact, it may be more difficult in an urban area like Austin that it would be in Idaho, weather notwithstanding.
Indeed. But InstaPundit readers have been hearing this for years.
TROLLING THE PRESS: “I’m the only guy who gets impeached and my numbers go up.”
TWO MEN SAY THEY’RE JESUS — ONE OF THEM MUST BE WRONG:
Shot:
Chaser: Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: Obama Is ‘Sort of God.’
—NewsBusters, June 5th, 2009.
(Via Small Dead Animals.)
TAMMY BRUCE: “In the 90s I was a host on a talk radio station in LA, the same that aired Rush. I was president of LA NOW, & the liberal wkend host when he visited the station. He was so vilified by my then-crowd, I expected a monster. Instead, I met a remarkable, kind and encouraging man. He was gregarious & generous when we met. He shook my hand & I was shocked that he was nice genuinely curious about my radio work and activism. I realized I was going to have a fascinating conversation.”
Read the whole thing.
#JOURNALISM: Flashback: June 30, 2020: Trump’s bet on a vaccine could come at a cost: The federal government has poured $10 billion into Operation Warp Speed. “As coronavirus cases surge to record levels and states backtrack on efforts to reopen their economies, the Trump administration is increasingly pinning its hopes on a vaccine that may never come.”
Spoiler: It came.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: NY School Principal Sends Parents A Guide Asking Them To Reflect On Their Whiteness.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Oddly Silent on Lincoln Project Implosion After Boosting Its Top Leaders.
ANDREW KLAVAN: Rush’s Monument: Let us all speak, and fearlessly.
MICHAEL WALSH: Rush Limbaugh, RIP.
WISCONSIN: Plaintiffs drop federal suit in Kyle Rittenhouse case. “Other possible suits in the Rittenhouse case are still pending. Earlier this month, attorneys for Huber’s family and Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, who was seriously injured in the shootings, filed notices of claim indicating they will sue the City of Kenosha and Kenosha County, alleging that law enforcement negligence contributed to the shootings.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Here’s how the Perseverance landing could pave the way for humans on Mars.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Prof. Marc Lamont Hill: Goal of Black Lives Matter is to “dismantle the Zionist project.”
Related: The Malignant Tradition of UC Irvine’s Hate-Israel Activists.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Rush Limbaugh Changed America.
WE’VE LEARNED A LOT ABOUT THE DOWNSIDES OF INFLAMMATION LATELY: How inflammatory signalling molecules contribute to carcinogenesis.
NEWS I HOPE YOU CAN’T USE: How to Stay Warm Without Power.
Of course, InstaPundit readers know how to run a furnace off an inverter.
More here.
WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage: How bad energy policy led to rolling blackouts in the freezing Lone Star State.
Mr. Abbott blamed his state’s extensive power outages on generators freezing early Monday morning, noting “this includes the natural gas & coal generators.” But frigid temperatures and icy conditions have descended on most of the country. Why couldn’t Texas handle them while other states did?
The problem is Texas’s overreliance on wind power that has left the grid more vulnerable to bad weather. Half of wind turbines froze last week, causing wind’s share of electricity to plunge to 8% from 42%. Power prices in the wholesale market spiked, and grid regulators on Friday warned of rolling blackouts. Natural gas and coal generators ramped up to cover the supply gap but couldn’t meet the surging demand for electricity—which half of households rely on for heating—even as many families powered up their gas furnaces. Then some gas wells and pipelines froze.
In short, there wasn’t sufficient baseload power from coal and nuclear to support the grid. Baseload power is needed to stabilize grid frequency amid changes in demand and supply. When there’s not enough baseload power, the grid gets unbalanced and power sources can fail. The more the grid relies on intermittent renewables like wind and solar, the more baseload power is needed to back them up.
But politicians don’t care about grid reliability until the power goes out. And for three decades politicians from both parties have pushed subsidies for renewables that have made the grid less stable.
Start with the 1992 Energy Policy Act signed by George H.W. Bush, which created a production tax credit to boost the infant wind industry. Generators collect up to $25 per megawatt hour of power they produce regardless of market demand. The credit was supposed to expire in 1999, but nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program, as Ronald Reagan once quipped.
The renewables lobby found GOP allies in windy states like Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa. Former Enron CEO Ken Lay, who had made a big bet on wind, begged then Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1998 to lobby Congress to extend the credit for five years. Congress has since extended it more than a dozen times, most recently in December.
Wind producers persuaded former Gov. Rick Perry to back a $5 billion network of transmission lines to connect turbines in western Texas to cities. This enabled them to build more turbines—and collect more tax credits. Because the Texas grid is often oversupplied, wind producers sometimes pay to off-load their power, though they still turn a profit with the tax credits.
Coal and nuclear are more strictly regulated and can’t compete, and many coal plants have shut down in Texas and elsewhere. Over the last decade about 100 gigawatts of coal power nationwide has been retired—enough to power 60 million homes. Many nuclear plants are scheduled to shut down, including large reactors in New York and Illinois this year.
We need more nice, reliable, environmentally friendly nuclear plants.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Rush Limbaugh Changed America.
Before Rush, talk radio was different. Talk radio was about cotton candy issues. Larry King on the Mutual Broadcast Network hosted an overnight parade of callers talking about pets, childhood memories, landscaping, and just how they were doing. Scores of local talk show hosts – like Perry Marshall at KDKA in Pittsburgh – entertained with friendly chat, the sweet cotton candy that dissolves away quick into meaninglessness.
That was radio B.R. – Before Rush.
Running the board at WPBR on this August debut day, I could tell immediately this new brand of talk was revolutionary. It was listening to Sgt. Pepper for the first time. It was the first ride on the looping coaster that defied gravity. It was bold and brash and, most of all, spoke to Americans about what America was. Rush spoke to what it means to be American, and what America means as an idea.
Rush was the “fairness doctrine” and mush mouth radio put out to pasture. On Saturday the week of Rush’s debut, I would produce a radio show called “Our Eyes” where the elderly called into the eye-doctor host to talk about vision issues.
That is the radio world Rush stepped into, on the same station in Palm Beach.
Before Fox News, before Drudge and the Blogosphere, Rush was America’s alternative news source, both quoting articles that he believed his massive audience needed to hear, and pushing back on what we would now call “fake news.” As Dan McLaughlin writes, “His death also marks the decisive end of another era: the post-Reagan, post–Cold War Right of the 1990s, in which he was a central figure.”
TO BE FAIR, THEY’RE ACTUALLY DOING THE AUSSIES A FAVOR:
I RAN ACROSS THIS OLD GEM TODAY: Ace: No Matter How Hard We Run, We Can Never Escape Our Childhood Breakfast Cereals. “I wanted to be an Apple Jacks kid. . . . Kaboom was for people — children, I mean — who had decided to give up on life.”
PRESIDENT-IN-WAITING HARRIS OFF TO BRILLIANT START: Harris and Her Spokeswoman Stumble on CNN, NBC Over Questions Regarding School Reopenings.
STAY CLASSY, PARTY OF TOLERANCE AND DIVERSITY: ‘Rest in Piss:’ The Left Celebrates Rush Limbaugh’s Death.
JOE BIDEN IS STILL AUDITIONING:
Biden is fitting into a position he has pursued for almost 30 years; he finally caught the car and now doesn’t know what to do with it. But Biden is no longer auditioning. He’s going to be held to account, perhaps not by an overly friendly media, but certainly by a pandemic-weary country wondering when their kids can go back to schools in districts that are friendly to the President. Biden can start acting like a President, or continue looking like a passive hostage to special-interest union groups and foreign adversaries.
His administration is shifting the goalposts at the whims of his decades-long donors. His press secretary only offers flailing talking points. And with the exception of a brief reemergence on Fox News today, there is no Donald Trump to serve as a distraction. The realization that Joe Biden is the same Joe Biden he’s been for 37 years in Washington is going to become more apparent.
But the press, both in their role as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and because they fear being locked in the closet, will do their damnedest to prop up the husk of the president: WaPo Fact Checker Glenn Kessler forgets the ‘first rule of holes’ after getting busted running cover for lying liar Joe Biden.
WAIT A MINUTE, TRUMP ‘LAUNCHED’ THE GOP CIVIL WAR? To hear an unidentified Washington Examiner headline writer tell it, that’s exactly what former President Donald Trump did by responding to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell denunciation on the Senate floor shortly after the second acquittal of the impeached 45th Chief Executive. “Trump Launches Republican Civil War With Attack on ‘Hack’ McConnell” is how the headline read.
Examiner White House Reporter, Rob Crilly, who wrote the news story thus headlined, put the issue slightly more deftly, saying in his lead that Trump merely “threatened” a civil war with his vintage OrangeManBad verbal stomping on McConnell.
So, to apply these two standards, we would have to rewrite the history books to say, for example, that President Abraham Lincoln either launched the Civil War or threatened to do so by re-supplying Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The bloody four-year conflict that followed was not the started by the Confederates who first fired on the freshened facility, as we were all taught many years ago.
I DUNNO, THE CIA DOESN’T SEEM TO DEAL VERY EFFECTIVELY WITH THIS WORLD: How to Escape the Confines of Time and Space According to the CIA.
JAMES LILEKS: WARNING. UNFETTERED CONVERSATIONS ARE HAPPENING!
UNFETTERED CONVERSATIONS ARE HAPPENING DESPITE CONCERNS
There’s backstory to one of the piece’s authors, who strikes me as an utterly third-rate mind without any leavening agents such as intellectual humility or a sense of history beyond the early years of Nickelodeon. The idea that people are using a private means of communication that is — what’s the word? — PRIVATE, well, it just galls. Misinformation might be spread! No — it’s probably being spread! People are saying things and using words and there’s no one from Snopes or Politico to stop them and say “hold up now, let’s run that assertion past our panel of people whose vested devotion to a particular set of ideological concepts do not align with yours, but are considered True because they believe in all the Good Things.”
There’s a spirit of busybody bossy vengeance abroad in the land, and I hate it. And by “land” I mean that nowhere place that shapes the culture.
As Glenn Greenwald wrote on Sunday, “In other words, journalists, desperate for content, have flagged Clubhouse as a new frontier for their slimy work as voluntary hall monitors and speech police.”
REVIEW: Walther PDP.
JEN PSAKI AND THE IDENTITY DEFENSE:
As it turns out, this reflex is Psaki’s primary means of dispensing with questions to which she has no answers. When the GameStop story was dominating the news cycle, a reporter asked whether the White House was concerned about the stock-market activity and whether there had been conversations with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the subject.
“Well, I’m also happy to repeat that we have the first female Treasury secretary and a team that’s surrounding her and often questions about markets,” Psaki replied. “We’ll send [you] to them.”
No further explanation was forthcoming. We were meant to be contented with the irrelevant reminder that Treasury secretary Janet Yellen was selected for her post according to the eminently progressive criterion of her gender.
Just yesterday, taking questions from Twitter for a video response, Psaki did it again when one user inquired about what President Biden is doing for small businesses.
“First and foremost, he nominated a woman to lead the Small Business Administration, who formerly worked there,” she responded, as if the gender of the SBA chief has anything remotely to do with whether the administration has plans to address the concerns of small businesses.
In the meantime though, Psaki’s schtick is great fodder of America’s Newspaper of Record: Journalists Cheer As Jen Psaki Announces The Gulags Will Be Run By A Woman Of Color.
As CNN would say, (“(How Refreshing).”
UNSURPRISING: ‘I’m glad he’s dead’: ‘Rest in piss’ trends as compassionate, tolerant liberals dance on Rush Limbaugh’s grave.
Just as their hatred for Trump is really hatred for Trump’s voters, so their hatred for Limbaugh is really hatred for Limbaugh’s audience. Without hatred for their fellow Americans, the left would have no reason to feel special.
UPDATE: Maybe he was just trying to speak slowly so you could follow him, Jeff:
ROGER SIMON: ‘Power to the People:’ The GOP Bloodbath Has Begun.
It’s not just the terminally Deep State Mitch McConnell—excoriated in an entirely justifiable statement from Donald Trump—but Kevin McCarthy and a host of other Beltway Republicans who must somehow either lose their positions of authority, that is be sidelined and rendered either impotent or inconsequential, and/or be primaried out before the election of 2022.
Otherwise the Republican Party will likely lose in 22 and again in 24 because the rank-and-file is completely out of synch with these putative party elites.
This easily could happen even given the traditional advantage of the opposition party and the moronic policies of the Biden administration. (Keystone pipeline anyone…? Brrr….)
Republican voters mostly despise their current leadership and favor Trump by large margins, if we are to believe the polls and, more importantly, our own eyes.
Many of the rank-and-file will not participate in the election, sitting it out, if these old school “leaders” and their similarly-inclined colleagues are not removed and still wield power.
Either that, or those millions known as the “deplorables” will attempt to establish a third party. Some already are. Almost all have seriously considered it.
Many previously well thought of Republican leaders incredibly remain clueless about this or deliberately have their heads in the sand. Why, for example, has Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton made an alliance with Mitt Romney, of all people, to promote minimum wage legislation?
The weeding out of these, sadly many, Deep State uniparty figures must begin immediately because 2022 will be upon us before we know it.
As reported here at The Epoch Times, the process has already begun with many in the grassroots suddenly stepping forward to volunteer for Republican Party positions at the local level.
As we used to say in the sixties, “Power to the People”—only this time, coming from the heartland of America, it may have more of a reality to it than it did then, even be more long-lasting and healing, if it succeeds.
Related: Ron DeSantis Gets 2024 ‘Tier One’ Designation From Party Insiders.
YEAH, BUT YOU GET A 55 INSTEAD OF A 50. THAT’S TEN PERCENT MORE QX RIGHT THERE! 2022 Infiniti QX55 Will Be Considerably More Expensive Than QX50.
MICHAEL WALSH: A Freedom-Loving People Needs to Call the Bluff of Those Instilling Fear.
The toll such imprisonment is taking on teens and tweens is incalculable, and can and should be laid squarely at the feet of everyone from the self-aggrandizing media gnome, Dr. Anthony Fauci, to the local school board—but, naturally, it won’t be. Not to mention the real death toll from heart disease, cancer, suicide, and other mortal threats that has been concealed by the Covid obsession, but whose true cost will eventually be revealed.
So this is the part where we call their bluff. Tell them that Joe Biden has no constitutional right to issue a “mask mandate” and then tell him what he can do with it.
Tell them Florida governor Ron DeSantis is the model of what a governor under our system of federalism ought to be.
Tell them that we have no further use for Mitch McConnell (who should have lost his seat in 2014 and now will be around to plague us until 2026) nor, indeed, for the GOP of Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, and the four other senators who voted to convict Donald Trump during his shampeachment “trial.”
Tell them we demand the immediate cessation of any and all “states of emergency,” the full restitution of our civil rights, including our right to be left alone by a meddlesome and malicious government, and the reinstatement of the safeguards of our electoral system. That elections should be held on a single day, during defined hours, and not one minute earlier or later. That the “resistance” begins here and now, with the end of the COVID-19 panic.
Most of all, tell them that we’re perfectly safe, and we are no longer afraid of them, or of the unreasoning, unjustified terror they have imposed upon us. That we will no longer retreat, but advance. That we are free men and women and intend to stay that way. And that henceforth, the only thing they have to fear is us.
Read the whole thing.
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