Read the whole thing.
NASHVILLE CHRISTMAS BOMBING UPDATE: “Law enforcement sources tell CBS News they have found what appear to be human remains near the site of the explosion. They have not indicated whether the remains are from someone connected to the explosion or from an innocent victim.”
UPDATE: Roger Simon on the possible AT&T connection:
The second fact or factoid that emerged was fleeting—the brief mention by one of the newscasters of the accusations that former NSA analyst Edward Snowden had made about AT&T.
This one sent me scurrying to the internet. Back in October 2016, Anthony Cuthbertson wrote in Newsweek under the title “AT&T Spying Program is ‘Worse Than Snowden Revelations’”:
“A for-profit surveillance program carried out by telecommunications giant AT&T was more serious than the 2013 NSA spying revelations, according to digital rights advocates.
“AT&T’s Project Atmosphere was unveiled Tuesday by the Daily Beast to be secretly selling customer data to law enforcement agencies for the purpose of investigating everything from murder to medical fraud.
“Digital rights group Fight for the Future says that making customer data available to local police departments without a warrant goes beyond the government-level surveillance revealed by former NSA contract worker Edward Snowden.
“‘AT&T customers are outraged but this affects everyone,’ Evan Greer, campaign director at Fight for the Future, tells Newsweek. ‘AT&T went far beyond complying with legal government requests and actually built a powerful data mining product to sell our private information to as many government agencies and police departments as they could.’”
For more The Intercept has an article — “The Wiretap Rooms—The NSA Has Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight Cities” that includes the following:
“‘The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s ‘extreme willingness to help.’ It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it “has access to information that transits the nation,” but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers.”
Stay tuned.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Santa Claus Converts To Calvinism, Moves Everybody To Naughty List.
HMM: “A recreational vehicle parked in the deserted streets of downtown Nashville exploded early Christmas morning, causing widespread communications outages that took down police emergency systems and grounded flights at the city’s airport. Authorities said they believe the blast was intentional. . . . AT&T said the affected building is the central office of a telephone exchange, with network equipment in it. The blast interrupted service, but the company declined to say how widespread outages were. . . . The AT&T outages site showed service issues in middle Tennessee and Kentucky, including Bowling Green about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of Nashville. Several police agencies reported that their 911 systems were down because of the outage, including Murfreesboro and Knox County, home to Knoxville about 180 miles (290 kilometers) east of Nashville. The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily halted flights out of Nashville International Airport because of telecommunications issues associated with the explosion.”
This reminds me a bit of the mysterious shot-up substation in Silicon Valley a few years back, like it’s someone trying to demonstrate a capability to monkeywrench things. Stay tuned.
Also, if your 911 system can be taken down by an explosion 180 miles away, your 911 system sucks.
HOLLYWOOD, INTERRUPTED: Christmas Movies Show What Hollywoke Gets Wrong.
HAPPY TRAILS, HANS! What Is Everybody’s Favorite Christmas Movie Really About?
BIDEN PROMISES TO END PROLONGED DETENTION AT IMMIGRATION DETENTION CENTERS: That’s great if he can do it consistently with enforcing the law.
But it may be worth pointing out that when I inspected an immigration detention center a couple of years ago with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, my colleagues and I were a bit surprised that it was as nice as it was. Naturally, what we actually saw didn’t make it into the Commission’s report (which instead parroted unsubstantiated rumors, some of which were obviously and even provably false). But it did make it into my dissent.
THE CLOCK IS TICKING, COCAINE MITCH: Cruz, Preserving Trump Legacy, Heads Off Biden At The Pass On Rejoining Iran Deal, Paris Climate Accords.
AT AMAZON, Bras for Women.
CHRISTMAS RACE AROUND THE WORLD AT THE SOUTH POLE: Winner gets a 10-minute hot shower! That’s one of the eight Christmas traditions on seven continents described by the Christian Post, including the Peace Apples in China.
STEPHEN KRUISER’S DAILY BRIEFING: Merry Christmas and Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down!
HE’S MAKING A SMART GUY’S COCKTAIL: The Enemy Is Fragility. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s thoughtful new strategy. (Bumped — but with a present.)
Planet Earth, for worse and occasionally better, is a world of neighborhood existence — many neighborhoods at peace, many (most?) neighborhoods uneasy and facing tenuous circumstances, too many neighborhoods experiencing outright anarchy and war.
Blame the level of perception, of easy aggregation, for missing this truth. I’ll illustrate with an anecdote. Six years ago, an obstreperous type saw me at a private reception. From across the room, he bellowed: “Austin Bay! Is there any hope for Africa?”
My reply to the bellower — and the 15 or 20 so others present, who were surprised by the bellowing and puzzled by the question: “Which Africa? There are 6,000 Africas. Some Africas are doing quite well.”
The bellower blinked — an encouraging response. By George, he got it.
More:
The term “failed state” had its day in D.C. Beltway discourse. It translated — roughly — as a region that could not or did not protect humans living within its political boundaries. On the ground, it meant scores, if not hundreds, of neighborhoods convulsed by violence.
This is why the U.S. State Department’s new document “U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability” is worth reading and implementing.
The new strategy identifies fragility as the key strategic issue, not failure. “Failed state” implies static rubble that requires centralized rebuilding.
Fragility frames the problem as a dynamic where small changes — neighborhood by neighborhood — can ultimately produce systemic improvement.
Kicker: “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a comprehensive thinker. For that reason alone, superficial media will ignore the new strategy. So download the department’s PDF and read it for yourself.”
A present for you — the link to “United States Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability.” Yes, I should have linked to it yesterday. Merry Christmas.
RELATED: The cocktail reference. It’s a dynamic way of analyzing complex problems.
ANOTHER DEFECTION: “A dissident women’s studies PhD speaks out.“
NO, CHRISTMAS ISN’T A WARMED OVER PAGAN HOLIDAY: If you’ve heard it once, you’ve likely heard it a thousand times – Christmas is nothing more than a pagan holiday taken over by the Catholic Church and turned into something completely different. As The Incarnate Investigation host Jimmy Wallace makes clear, there’s more to the story the critics never tell you.
But wait, there’s more! Philosophy Professor Travis Dickinson asks if Christmas is based on a wildly crazy claim (Hint: Yes, it is). And, as the ever-thoughtful Sarah Hoyt uniquely reminds us this morning: We Americans have put our own unique spin on the appropriate celebrations. It’s part of how we got to be the “land of the Free and the home of the Brave.”
AT AMAZON, Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar.
TIME’S UP ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. TIME’S UP: Oregon Patriots Water the Tree of Liberty.
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE, IS IT, THAT WE’RE GOING TO ALLOW AN ENEMY AGENT TO TAKE CONTROL OF THE COUNTRY, AFTER THE MOST BLATANTLY PUBLIC FRAUD IN HISTORY: China, The Iran Deal, and Biden.
If G-d has abandoned the United States of America, fools and drunkards are in real trouble.
DON’T SELL TOO EARLY: On this day in 1878, Louis-Joseph Chevrolet, race car driver, car designer, and co-founder of the Chevrolet Motor Car Company, was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Canton of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Being the co-founder of Chevrolet didn’t make him rich. He sold out to his partner after just four years (who soon sold to General Motors). But his name lives on.
RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Yet another Democrat leader tells people to stay home for Christmas, then announces she will travel to visit her relatives.
IN OCCUPIED LANDS, THERE’S NO LIMIT: One day’s news from the SF Bay Area — how leftist can you get?
WELL, THERE GOES MY WINTER’S NAP: ‘Twas the Night Before 2020 Christmas — a poem by Liberato.
FEWER AND FEWER AUTHORITIES AND INSTITUTIONS THESE DAYS: Whom Do You Trust?
HOW LONG WILL ANYONE EVEN BE ALLOWED TO MENTION THIS STUFF: Things Politicians Like: Alternate Covid Care Facilities.
THE MAL-EDUCATED, MARXIAN LEFT DESTROYS WEALTH WHERE THEY GO. AND IF THEY SUCCEED IN CAPTURING THE MAJOR ENGINE OF WEALTH IN THE WORLD, IT’S GOING TO BE A LONG DARK NIGHT FOR THE WORLD: Wealth “extraction” in San Francisco.
GOOD. WE DO NOT CONSENT: President Trump Demands Congress Revisit $900 Billion Pork-Filled COVID Bailout.
WE NEED A LOT MORE OF THIS: Rural citizens to Gavin Newsom: Kiss my ass!
Remember these words, we’re all going to need them: I do NOT consent.
AND AGAIN, I WANT TO NOTE MY SHOCKED FACE: Georgia state senate: Election “untrustworthy” and should be decertified.
BEHOLD! MY SHOCKED FACE! Nationwide analysis suggests masks increased the spread of COVID-19.
December 24, 2020
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Elitist Hypocrisy is Killing Small Businesses.
IT’S ALL HOW YOU LOOK AT IT: Three different left-leaning media outlets reporting on the same year-end ICE report show that the Washington Post beats the competition at coming up with dramatic sounding but ultimately misleading headlines.
ICE Arrests and Deportations Drop Sharply in 2020, Largely Due to the Pandemic—CBS News.
US Immigration Arrests Down 27% in 2020—A Trend Activists Hope Biden Will Continue—Reuters.
Deportations of Migrant Families Spiked in 2020—Washington Post.
The “spike” that the Washington Post points to is actually good news no matter what one’s views on immigration law enforcement: ICE has entered into an agreement with Central American countries that allows it to verify quickly where illegal entrants are from, thus allowing for quick repatriation without the need for an extensive stay at an immigration detention center. One has to read well into the article before one learns that deportations are way down.
The original headline for Washington Post might have been something like “ICE Deportation Decline,” since that is what’s on the URL, but the “spike” headline is what’s there now.
SPACE: Space acquisition reform awaits Biden’s Pentagon team. Well, good luck.
VICTORY IN BRITAIN: Brexiteers, we did it! “We have achieved something that no other member state of the European Union has ever managed to do: that is, we didn’t only express our democratic opposition to the EU oligarchy – many member states have done that – but we also managed to defend that democratic opposition from the inevitable elitist onslaught against it. All other European peoples who have voted against EU constitutions or treaties or austerity packages – the French, the Dutch, the Irish, the Greeks – have eventually been defeated. They were either just ignored or forced to vote again until they gave the ‘right’ answer. Britain is the first nation in the history of this anti-democratic, anti-working-class, neoliberal oligarchy to resolutely see its democratic wishes through to the end.”
Related: Farage on the Deal: “The War is Over.”
As the establishment hissy-fits over Brexit and over the 2016 election illustrate, our political/journalistic/academic class fundamentally doesn’t believe that it should have to accept an electoral defeat.
And even in the United States, where they’ve supposedly won, they don’t seem happy:
IT’S NOT SCIENCE JUST BECAUSE SCIENTISTS SAY IT IS, AND IT’S ESPECIALLY NOT SCIENCE JUST BECAUSE JOURNALISTS AND POLITICIANS SAY IT IS: 2020 Hindsight – Bruce Pardy: Our year of bowing down to ‘The Science’.
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE: Holiday Classic Takes On New Meaning As Jimmy Stewart’s Post-War Struggles Bleed Into Film.
And for Mirror Universe version of the same story, It’s a Wonderful Fountainhead, too.
YEP. THE PRESS IS JUST GASLIGHTING US ON THIS STUFF. Majority of Americans hate socialism, reject AOC.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Charles Mingus’s Secret Eggnog Recipe Will Knock You on Your Ass.
OLD AND BUSTED: “Follow the Science.”
The New Hotness? Fauci says he’s been intentionally moving goal posts on herd immunity estimates.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Public trust is the public health community’s most vital asset. Why do they seem so eager to squander it?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Roaring 2020s will be post-Covid vaccine ‘sex-fest’ and ‘era of vice and indulgence.’
The Gray Lady is anxious to get a jump on the fun:
KURT SCHLICHTER: Warrior Warriors, Not Social Justice Warriors.
NOT THE BABYLON BEE: A judge in Virginia ruled that a black defendant wouldn’t have a fair trial unless all portraits of white judges are removed from the courtroom.
Has Gov. Northam been consulted on this decision?
GRAY LADY PHONING IT IN DURING THE HOLIDAYS BY AIRING BORING RERUNS: “As we all know, everything is raaaacist today. Even, the New York Times tells us, tiki bars.”
Iowahawk, an aficionado of these sorts of establishments, notes that he’s seen this movie before:
IT’S A SHAME HE HAD SO LITTLE MATERIAL TO WORK WITH THIS YEAR: Dave Barry’s Year in Review: 2020 was a year of nonstop awfulness.
MOST PEOPLE DO DISLIKE BEING SHOT WITH BULLETS OF ANY CALIBER: Using .22 Magnum for Self-Defense.
PRESIDENT TRUMP ON ELECTION FRAUD.
MORE “STAND YOUR GROUND” CONTROVERSY: Ohio governor is deciding whether to sign or veto “Stand Your Ground” law.
GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-AWARENESS: Gov. Cuomo: ‘Santa’s Going To Be Very Good To Me’ Because ‘I Worked Hard This Year.’
DON’T BLAME ME, BLAME THE KIMCHI: Uranus blasted a gas bubble 22,000 times bigger than Earth.
MAYOR BANE SAYS THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD. Bill de Blasio Doubles Down: ‘Our Mission Is to Redistribute Wealth.’
FLASHBACK: There’s actually some good news.
NO TWEETS, NO INTERVIEWS: JIMMY LAI’S UNUSUAL BAIL CONDITIONS. The Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon is freed on bail, but was placed under house arrest and barred from meeting foreign officials and publishing articles.
EVERYBODY KNOWS ‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS:’ But there are lots of facts about the most widely celebrated holiday on the planet that many folks don’t know. It’s actually quite an interesting story about how Christmas became “Christmas” and this video from Prager U puts it all together. And speaking of Christmas, Merry Christmas to all here on Instapundit.
EXTRACT OR DIE:
As the catastrophic state of California’s finances finally begins to set in among politicians, anti-tech media personalities, and far left cultural influencers, the narrative on California’s techxodus — that is, the migration of California’s technology industry out of the state — has shifted from mockery, and “we’ll be better off without you,” to a far more sober, and increasingly-desperate “leaving California is immoral.”
As it is simply too embarrassing for politicians to admit the state needs the technology industry after more than a decade of antagonizing the men and women who built it, and as it is political suicide for incumbent politicians in a one-party state to admit that every one of the problems we’re facing has been created by our elected leaders, a moral argument for tech’s responsibility to California, and specifically the Bay Area, has recently been produced. It goes something like this: young ambitious people moved to the state, and struck gold. But rather than “give back” to the land, they’re leaving with resources they “took” from the region. Like the milkshake guy from There Will Be Blood, sucking oil from the earth. Like the evil army people from Avatar, and their unquenchable thirst for unobtanium. . . .
“Extracted,” she says. Smh. A week or so later, in the psychotic San Francisco Board meeting where our local representatives voted 10 to 1 to officially condemn Mark Zuckerberg for donating 75 million dollars to a hospital (really, this happened), the word came up again. When the floor was opened to the public, an activist downplayed what was, as Teddy Schleifer reports, “the largest single private gift to a public hospital ever,” and accused Zuckerberg of “extraction.” Our local politicians did not think this strange. . . .
The budget of San Francisco literally doubled this decade, from around six billion to over twelve billion dollars. With our government’s incredible, historic abundance of wealth, the Board of Supervisors has presided over: a dramatic increase in homelessness, drug abuse, crime — now including home invasion — and a crippling cost of living that can be directly ascribed to the local landed gentry’s obsession with blocking new construction. This latter piece is important, as it appears to be the only thing our Board cares about. This is because significantly increasing the local housing supply would decrease the value of the multi-million dollar homes almost every single one of our Supervisors owns, and we could never have that.
These past ten years I often wondered where the city’s money went. Could the leadership really be this stupid, or was there corruption? Turns out both. We’ve recently discovered our politicians are literally criminals, but they’re also bad at crime.
Yes, well, in a corrupt one-party state there’s no selection pressure to be better.
Plus: “I do think the technology industry can and should be blamed for one thing: taking this bullshit for as long as it has.”
PROFESSOR JACOBSON ON THE CORNELL WOKIES: “If they don’t like having me in the building, they can leave … but I’m not going to leave.” Plus: “I have no plans to leave right now. I had no plans to leave right now and I don’t see why I should be forced to change my life because they are so intolerant and they are so malicious.”
WHY IS GOOGLE SO RACIST? Former Google Diversity Recruiter: ‘F**K GOOGLE AND F**K THE WAY GOOGLE TREATS BLACK WOMEN And BLACK PEOPLE.’ “It’s a bit hard for me to believe that this extremely progressive company is a hotbed of anti-black racism but that’s apparently what people inside believe. It does make me wonder if this isn’t comparable to the campus takeover of Evergreen State College. There too, a campus known as one of the most progressive places in the country suddenly became convinced that racism was a threat to the very lives of students on campus, leading to any number of extreme actions.”
Get woke, go broke.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
