GRAND THEFT YEAR: 2020: The Year of the Big Fraud.
GET IN LINE AND BOW TO YOUR BETTERS, PEASANT! Dr. Deborah Birx Applied COVID Holiday Travel Restrictions to a Nation of Proles, Then Ignored Them Herself.
WE ARE IN THE HANDS OF PEOPLE WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT MONEY IS A MEASURE OF VALUE AND NOT VALUE ITSELF: Jumping Ju Ju Bones, Congress Agrees to 2.3 TRILLION Spending Package, 900 BILLION COVID Bailout Plus 1.4 Trillion Omnibus Spending.
WELL, THE LIBERAL FASCISTS DO HATE ISRAEL AND ARE REALLY ANTISEMITIC, THOUGH THEY USED TO TRY TO DISGUISE IT: Obama’s Latest Autobiography Rewrites Israeli History to Make You Hate the Jewish State.
EXCEPT THESE DAYS I DO PAY ATTENTION TO THE POLITICS OF THOSE I HELP. HORRIBLE? WELL, YOU KNOW, THEY’VE BEEN DOING THIS TO US FOR THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, WHENEVER THEY COULD GET AWAY WITH IT. THE LAST TEN YEARS, THEY’VE DONE IT OPENLY: Americans, Extend A Hand To Those In Need.
After the last four years and the “you will take the massive fraud in the election and like it?” Not. One Red Cent to the left, either in purchase or charity. Not if I can help it. A lot of the leftI do have to do business with, particularly given my profession and the lockdown. But if I can avoid it, I do. And if I can direct money to my comrades in the fight for liberty? I do.
SPEAKING OF, IF YOU’RE IN THE DENVER AREA: Do consider this restaurant for your take out needs.
And if readers want to recommend their own, or decent restaurants in other locked-down areas, in the comments, I’m sure it will be appreciated. Remember that we’re much, much worse than then left at tear down revenge. But we build! We create! We support! Let’s do it consciously!
TRY IT BUCKO. JUST TRY IT. THIS IS LIKE THE IDEA OF MAKING PEOPLE SIGN IN AT RESTAURANTS, WHICH IS DROPPED VERY FAST, BECAUSE THEY GET A LOT OF FAKE NAMES AND NUMBERS. (I HEAR JOHN GALT AND SUCH EAT OUT A LOT. UNFORTUNATELY A LOT OF CHURCHES SEEM TO BE STICKING WITH THIS IDIOCY. MAYBE PEOPLE DON’T GIVE CHURCHES FAKE NAMES. SHRUG) IT WORKS IN EUROPE. EUROPEANS ARE PROUD OF THEIR COMPLIANCE. IN THE U.S. A MILLION HACKERS WOULD RISE TO BOTH MAKE SURE NO DEMOCRAT OF THEIR ACQUAINTANCE EVER SHOWED AS VACCINATED, AND THAT EVERYONE ELSE WAS: Andrew Yang Has a Horrible Vaccination Idea.
BUT WE EACH SHOULD DO WHAT WE CAN: We Are Not Alone.
WE CAN’T ALL DO THE SAME: An Open Letter to the American Coward.
HONESTLY, THE FRAUD WAS SO BLATANT AND IN YOUR FACE THAT 75% OF AMERICANS KNOW IT. OR MORE, OF COURSE, CONSIDERING THIS POLL IS LIKELY TO BE SKEWED THE USUAL WAY. BUT WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE ASHAMED THE RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA PEOPLE CALL US RUBES? YEAH. THE ONLY RESPONSE FOR THAT IS DOUBLE MIDDLE FINGERS ALOFT: Resentment, Marcotte and Republican M.O.
December 20, 2020
LATINX IS WOKE AND STUPID, BUT I REPEAT MYSELF: “‘Latinx’ was created in America by people apparently not happy that Spanish is a gender-specific language. It’s a fake-Spanish word that wasn’t created by and isn’t used by Latinos to describe themselves. It’s a shortcut used to identify a huge and very diverse group of people. That term is offensive and people need to stop using it.”
SO YOU’RE SAYING EARTH IS ONLY LIVABLE BECAUSE OF . . . CLIMATE CHANGE? Ancient Earth had a thick, toxic atmosphere like Venus — until it cooled off and became liveable.
REPUBLICANS NEED TO WELD THESE PEOPLE INTO AN ANGRY MOB AIMED AT THE DEMOCRATS WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR SITUATION: Pain, despair and poverty reach fever pitch for unemployed workers.
A SIDE BENEFIT OF TEACHING: One of my students just got her first journal publication.
WELL, GOOD. IT’S UNSCIENTIFIC GARBAGE. ‘Unconscious bias training’ to be scrapped by ministers.. “The training, intended to tackle patterns of discrimination and prejudice, is used in many workplaces. The government says there is no evidence it changes attitudes – and is urging other public sector employers to end this type of training.”
THIS H.L. MENCKEN ESSAY ON GUN CONTROL FROM 1925 is still gold.
The new law that it advocated, indeed, is one of the most absurd specimens of jackass legislation ever heard of, even in this paradise of legislative donkeyism. Its single and sole effect would be to exaggerate enormously all of the evils it proposes to put down. It would not take pistols out of the hands of rogues and fools; it would simply take them out of the hands of honest men. The gunman today has great advantages everywhere. He has artillery in his pocket, and he may assume that, in the large cities, at least two-thirds of his prospective victims are unarmed. But if the Nation’s proposed law (or amendment) were passed and enforced, he could assume safely that all of them were unarmed.
Here I do not indulge in theory. The hard facts are publicly on display in New York State, where a law of exactly the same tenor is already on the books—the so-called Sullivan Law. In order to get it there, of course, the Second Amendment had to be severely strained, but the uplifters advocated the straining unanimously, and to the tune of loud hosannas, and the courts, as usual, were willing to sign on the dotted line. It is now a dreadful felony in New York to “have or possess” a pistol. Even if one keeps it locked in a bureau drawer at home, one may be sent to the hoosegow for ten years. More, men who have done no more are frequently bumped off. The cops, suspecting a man, say, of political heresy, raid his house and look for copies of the Nation. They find none, and are thus baffled—but at the bottom of a trunk they do find a rusted and battered revolver. So he goes on trial for violating the Sullivan Law, and is presently being psychoanalyzed by the uplifters at Sing Sing.
With what result? With the general result that New York, even more than Chicago, is the heaven of footpads, hijackers, gunmen and all other such armed thugs. Their hands upon their pistols, they know that they are safe. Not one citizen out of a hundred that they tackle is armed for getting a license to keep a revolver is a difficult business, and carrying one without it is more dangerous than submitting to robbery. So the gunmen flourish and give humble thanks to God. Like the bootleggers, they are hot and unanimous for Law Enforcement.
Read the whole thing.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: School Choice Reduces Teen Suicide, New Study Finds. When students who face bullying at their public school can go elsewhere, it literally saves lives.
I thought the left was pro-choice and (at least posed as being) against bullying? But curiously, the incoming administration (including what’s left of the cerebrum of their elderly frontman) isn’t happy with school choice: Joe Biden reportedly to be tough on charter schools.
MAYBE. OR MAYBE WE’RE THE FORERUNNERS, THE ANCIENT ONES, THE FIRST GALACTIC CIVILIZATION. The Milky Way is probably full of dead civilizations. If so, I hope that enough Star Wars / Star Trek stuff survives to leave successors scratching their heads over our lost technological wizardry.
LORDING IT OVER THE REST OF US IS THE ENTIRE POINT: Dr. Birx Took Family Trip to Delaware After Thanksgiving, Despite Her Own COVID Advice.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, traveled to a family vacation home in Delaware the day after Thanksgiving, despite her own guidelines recommending that people avoid travel and large family gatherings. Members of Birx’s family from two different households were in attendance, the Associated Press reported on Sunday: her husband, daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren. Birx told the AP that she did not travel for the purpose of celebrating the holiday, but was there for the “winterization of the property before a potential sale.” She also argued that everyone there was in her “immediate household,” while acknowledging that they lived in different homes.
Flashbacks:
● Gavin Newsom’s French Laundry Outing Crystallizes the Arrogance of COVID-19 Dictators.
● San Francisco Mayor London Breed had her own French Laundry party — the night after Gavin Newsom’s.
As Stephen Kruiser suggested: Let’s Start Jailing Lawmakers Who Violate Their Own COVID Restrictions. “Imagine the pure, poetic justice of seeing Newsom, Cuomo, and some of the other Hitler youth (stole that from Animal House) cooling their heels in a holding cell after being caught with their masks off and their pants down.”
MARK JUDGE: The World’s Worst Self-Help Guru.
Saying this honestly is what makes Hollis’ work [James Hollis, author of Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times] so bracing. Hollis would understand why he was one of the first people I sought out in the fall of 2018, after becoming he target of one off the most vicious and evil political hits in recent history. I was tossed into a maelstrom of false accusations, rumors and lies involving a claim that I witnessed a sexual assault, a story that no one who was apparently involved with was able to corroborate.
Soon after the fiasco ended, Hollis was giving a series of lectures at the Jung Society of Washington. I knew that Hollis would understand what I was enduring. I’d survived, as a friend said, “the entire world projecting its shadow onto you.” According to Jung, the work of our lives is not accolades or sunny happiness, but finding our destiny while “integrating the shadow”—i.e., confronting and accepting our dark sides. If we don’t, we wind up projecting our shadow onto others. For several weeks, the media, political activists, and anyone with anger or psychological issues transposed their shadow onto me.
Still, it seemed the culmination of something I’d been preparing for. I’d gotten sober in 1990, a change that forced me to listen to my soul as well as see the evil in the world with clear eyes. I abandoned a promising freelancer position at The Washington Post because I could see the censorious, totalitarian direction that the media and its liberal cheerleaders were going in. Better to live freely and die poor.
By the time the enemy arrived at Helm’s Deep in 2018, I’d no illusions of what I was up against, or what was about to happen. It was to be a Maoist-style mauling. Faced with extortion, career ruin, a shame storm and the threat that my lifelong friends would be destroyed if didn’t lie, I answered with the words Aragorn offered as the orcs approached and he was told his people were about to get wiped out: I will stay and die as one of them.
Read the whole thing.
OLD AND BUSTED: We Are All Socialist Now.
—The Washington Post, through then subsidiary publication Newsweek, February 16th, 2009.
The New Hotness? We Are All National Socialist Now:
I’m so old, I can remember the DNC-MSM getting the vapors over imagined “rats” in a Republican campaign ad in 2000: “Democrats smell campaign rat.” Who knew it was merely a case of projection?
In 2015, Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who drew the above image, “published (then unpublished) a disgusting piece depicting Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s daughters as toy monkeys and ‘fair game’ since they appeared in a campaign ad, ABC’s Good Morning America ignored the story completely while CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today excused it as merely a ‘feud’ and part of ‘increased scrutiny’ for Cruz as he ascends in the polls.”
THE LATE NIGHT PALACE GUARD IS BACK! Jonathan Turley: Joe Biden is proud of Hunter — Stephen Colbert’s embarrassing interview misses the mark.
As original Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts liked to quip, “you can only be avant-garde for so long, before you become garde,” or palace guard, as in the case of today’s late night hosts.
“AS A RESULT OF PREGNANCY TERMINATIONS:” Prenatal testing has halved the number of babies born with Down syndrome in Europe.
I BLAME DIEBOLD: What Happened to the Democrats Who Never Accepted Bush’s Election. The 2004 vote-fraud conspiracy movement never really died. What does that mean for Trump’s true believers—and America?
(Classical reference in headline.)
THESE ARE THE PEOPLE THE DEMOCRATS ARE PARTNERED WITH: China conducting mass sterilization on Muslim minorities that could amount to genocide. But, to be fair, progressives have a long history of supporting eugenics.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Son wins US lawsuit after parents destroy his porn collection. David Werking can seek damages after parents got rid of films and magazines worth $29,000.
LIVING IN MONTANA — THINGS THEY DON’T TELL YOU:
Much of his advice is universal for those fleeing locked down and/or riot-torn urban areas for the country.
Exit quote: “Because so many people from California, and they’re turning it into northern California. So that’s the one thing: If you’re moving here from out of state, the reason you’re moving here is why people love it here, so don’t change it. People like it the way it is and they don’t like to be told what to do, and they’re willing to let you do the same thing. Just don’t push where you came from onto the people here, and you’ll get along just fine.”
GOP governors better get cracking on Glenn’s Welcome Wagon kits ASAP, if they want to keep their states in the red column.
I SENSE THAT UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS ARE GROWING LESS TOLERANT OF STUDENT POSTURING: Johns Hopkins students miffed at officials’ reaction to revelation school founder owned slaves.
A CALIFORNIA PLAN TO CHASE AWAY THE RICH, THEN KEEP STALKING THEM: “California’s Legislature is considering a wealth tax on residents, part-year residents, and any person who spends more than 60 days inside the state’s borders in a single year. Even those who move out of state would continue to be subject to the tax for a decade—a provision that calls to mind the Eagles’ famous ‘Hotel California’ lyric: ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.’ The California Constitution probably allows a statewide wealth tax on residents, but any effort to create a tax capable of reaching across state borders is likely to run afoul of the U.S. Constitution. Taxing someone who spends only 60 days in the state in any single year—and extending that tax over an ensuing decade—would be something new under the sun.”
CHUCK TODD: WH’s Historic Failure Responsible For More Deaths Than WWII.
Is Todd saying that fighting the Wuhan coronavirus is the moral equivalent of war? If so, to paraphrase Tim Blair last year, when AOC and Bernie Sanders were playing the “moral equivalent of war” card to sell her “Green New Deal,” Fair enough — nuking Beijing it is, then.
AND PROBABLY MUCH LONGER: COVID-19 reinfection unlikely for at least six months, study finds.
CALIFORNIA: Despite strict lockdowns, ICUs are filling up.
Note, however, that the NYT changed its headline from this:
To: As California I.C.U.s fill up, the dead are counted by the hour.
I guess too many people were noticing the contradiction.
WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Fleeing New Yorkers resulted in an estimated $34 billion in lost income -study. That’s just the beginning.
All is proceeding as I have foreseen.
I HOPE THAT VENUSIAN HUMMER DEALERSHIP IS HAPPY NOW: World Economic Forum reminds everybody that climate change made Venus uninhabitable.
TAMARA KEEL ON Doomscrolling. “Stress hormones are stress hormones, and extended exposure to them is detrimental, but most folks don’t recognize this, which is why all this PTSD is going to go undiagnosed.”
I’M SO SORRY THIS IS HAPPENING TO YOU. Director James Gunn Throws Tantrum After Pence Announces Space Force Personnel Will Be Called ‘Guardians’: ‘Can We Sue This Dork?’
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Lying Minneapolis Council Members Now Say ‘Defund the Police’ Was Never Their ‘Framework.’
I’m so old, I can remember Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender uttering this in June to a CNN newsreader:
Note the text on the CNN Chyron as well.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Public Schools Are Losing Their Captive Audience of Children.
The pandemic is seriously damaging many of the left’s key institutions. The right should be taking advantage of that.
IS THERE ANYTHING LEFT THAT TIMES DOESN’T VIEW THROUGH A RACIAL PRISM? NY Times Says Order Of Who Gets Vaccine Should Be Based On Race.
THE EXODUS IS HERE: How Going Soft On Drugs And Crime Has Turned Seattle Into Another American Wasteland.
“WOKE” PUBLIC HEALTH: To Mitigate Racial Inequity, the CDC Wants To Vaccinate Essential Workers Before the Elderly: Vaccinating by age would save many more lives.
Obviously, saving lives isn’t the priority here.
December 19, 2020
LAUNCHING A FAULTY SPACECRAFT AND RELYING ON THE BACKUPS TO MAKE IT RIGHT: NASA to skip repair of Orion electronics unit.
HUMAN GARBAGE: LA DA George Gascon slams victim’s family as they protest sentencing plan.
Los Angeles’ controversial new district attorney told the family of a murder victim they should “keep their mouth shut” — unwittingly, he later said — as they protested his office’s kid-gloves handling of the accused killers.
“It’s unfortunate that some people do not have enough education to keep their mouth shut for a moment so we can talk,” George Gascon said in a video obtained by FOX 11 Los Angeles.
“My son can never speak again because he was murdered,” shouts a woman identified as the mother of Joshua Rodriguez, who was kidnapped and killed in 2015.
“My son matters!” she screamed as Gascon walked away. “And you’re going to do nothing about it!”
Gascon — who was elected last month promising a sweeping left-wing overhaul of the criminal justice system — was speaking to the press in front of a Pomona courthouse Friday when he was confronted by the family about his intention to drop the punishment sought against Rodriguez’s killers, eliminating the chance they could receive no-parole life sentences.
Why does he hate Hispanic victims and their families? Also, why does he look like a Disney villain?
LOCKDOWN’S LEGACY: U.S. drug overdose deaths reach record highs.
THIS IS SO WEIRD SINCE THEY HAVE NEAR-UNIVERSAL MASKING AND EXTENSIVE LOCKDOWNS: California Hospitals Struggling as Coronavirus Cases Explode.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Are There Anti-Semitic Tropes in Obama’s Memoir?
“If anti-Semitism involves using the label ‘Jew’ to evoke, emphasize or explain an interrelated complex of unattractive attributes, Obama’s description of Sarkozy is unquestionably anti-Semitic,” Ergas contends, before noting that “not one of the gushing reviews” from left-wing papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post, “considered Obama’s statement even worth mentioning.”
He makes a valid point. The political left assumes a moral high ground on diversity, so ready to be offended at words so innocent they have to be dubbed “micro-aggressions” so they can virtue-signal their own “anti-racist” bonafides.
In fairness, Obama’s casual anti-Semitism during his eight years at the White House makes his unflattering depiction of Sarkozy seem trivial by comparison, but imagine if Donald Trump wrote such a thing.
As PJM’s Matt Margolis noted in an article last year: The Democratic Party’s Anti-Semitism Problem Is Obama’s Legacy.
Prior to being elected president of the United States, Obama spent twenty years in the congregation of Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s anti-American and anti-Semitic remarks became a liability for Obama during the 2008 election but didn’t matter enough to the people who voted for him. Obama may have been forced to quit his church and distance himself from Wright, but that didn’t change who Obama was at heart—and it presented itself once he showed up to the White House.
And the Corbynization of the Democratic Party continues apace: Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock defended anti-Semitic pastor Jeremiah Wright.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: The Dalton Gang Shoots Itself.
Here is a link to the original text of the ransom note, which most of the Dalton faculty have signed. As Scott Johnston, who broke the news on his blog, comments:
The demands for additional staffers alone would add millions of dollars to Dalton’s annual budget. Siphoning off 50% of donations would dry up funding. Eliminating AP classes (referred to as “leveled courses”) would destroy college admissions. It’s not an exaggeration to say these demands, if implemented, would destroy Dalton altogether. According to insiders, much damage has already been done.
But if they don’t agree to the demands, what will happen? Don’t get me wrong, the protesters cannot be allowed to succeed. Yet if they don’t, knowing how insane progressives are on these issues, will they choose to destroy the school? After all, if Dalton is as racist as they say, how can they let it continue forming racist graduates to go out into the world and spread Evil?
Insert Kissinger joke on the Iran-Iraq War here.
BRUTAL, FACTUAL HONESTY ABOUT HOMELESSNESS: Discovery Institute Research Fellow Christopher Rufo takes a little more than 12 minutes in a compelling vidumentary to dissect why the homelessness problem keeps getting worse even as officials spend increasing billions of tax dollars on illusory solutions, then points to the actual causes and how to make measurable progress. Genuine compassion begins with facing reality.
SQUAD OWN GOALS: ‘Squad’ Member Calls Perdue And Loeffler The ‘Bonnie And Clyde Of Corruption.’
Rep. Ayanna Pressley told Georgians to vote for Democrats in the special runoff election and blasted Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, as well as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Pressley, a Massachusetts member of the “Squad” that includes Democratic lawmakers such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, appeared on MSNBC’s The ReidOut on Friday evening, in which she discussed the Jan. 5 contest.
“Georgia, do your thing. I know we’re asking a lot from Georgia, but do your thing, Georgia. Do what you do. All eyes are on Georgia,” she said.
“Mitch McConnell, Loeffler, Perdue — they are the Bonnie and Clyde of corruption. They are all the same,” she continued. “We need to regain control of the Senate. Georgia, do what you do.”
Does Pressley know that her fellow leftists consider Bonnie and Clyde (thanks in large part to the Warren Beatty movie) to be populist good guys?
INDUSTRY EXPANSION: Wilson Combat Expands Manufacturing, Adds Jobs.
JONAH GOLDBERG: Morality as a Foreign Language.
The New York Times has a big, mostly predictable story on the fall of Jeffrey Toobin. The first thing of note (or the fourth if you count the above) is the headline:
The Undoing of Jeffrey Toobin
How a leading man of legal journalism lost his sweetest gig.
The piece sets this up as some kind of mystery, even though just about everyone who has heard of this story knows how he lost the gig. (Again, I don’t want to offend anybody, so I’ll avoid clinical descriptions. During an online Zoom meeting, he let his mouse out of the house and proceeded to give it a hand.)
In other words, the big reveal of this journalistic whodunnit was his big reveal to his colleagues. (I mean “big reveal” in the literary, and not necessarily the anatomical sense.) The resolution of “How a leading man of legal journalism lost his sweetest gig” was known to the reader from the outset.
Let me explain this in a weird way: Sometimes certain things are explanations in and of themselves, without need of further commentary. For instance, one of my best friends in college was known around campus as one of the nicest people you’d ever meet. One day, a mutual friend who went to high school with him, said “Yeah, Andy’s a very decent guy, but you know his brother’s even nicer.”
I said, “Come on. How could anyone be nicer than Andy?” The guy paused for a second and then said, “His brother was a hugger at the Special Olympics.” He literally waited at the finish line and hugged every kid after they finished.
“Oh. Got it.” I replied.
Or here’s another story. On a business trip in India, my Dad had dinner with a major mogul in Bollywood. The multimillionaire said to my Dad, “Sid, I love your country. America is wonderful. But you can’t really be rich there.”
My Dad said something like, “What are you talking about? We have the richest people in the world in America.”
The mogul paused for a moment, and then said, “Let me put it this way: I have never tied my own shoes.”
“Ah, I see,” my Dad replied.
Now, imagine I was out of the loop and asked someone why Jeffrey Toobin lost his gig at The New Yorker and the answer was, “He pleasured himself on a Zoom call in front of his colleagues and boss.” I might have a lot of questions, but “Why was he fired?” really wouldn’t be one.
Apparently, that just shows I’m ensconced in a bourgeois, Judeo-Christian mindset.
Which for a very long time, is not something one could accuse most Timesmen of. Read the whole thing.
CREDENTIALED, BUT NOT EDUCATED: Jill Biden: I Worked Really Hard on My Misspelled, Mathematically-Incorrect, Dissertation. Math is hard: “Three quarters of the class will be Caucasian; one quarter of the class will be African American; and the remaining seats will be filled with students of Asian descent or non-resident aliens.”
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Ryan Kaji, age 9, earns $29.5m as this year’s highest-paid YouTuber.
NOT BACKING DOWN:
Story here. “The six dimensions of voting irregularities in the report include: outright voter fraud, ballot mishandling, contestable process fouls, equal protection clause violations, voting machine irregularities, and significant statistical anomalies. All six of those voting issues were present in at least two key states, according to the report, and a total of six battleground states experienced multiple examples of the other dimensions.”
Lots of people think the election was stolen. Democrats and the news media — but I repeat myself — are trying to portray this as a fringe view, but it’s anything but.
DO NOT TRUST CHINA. CHINA IS ASSHOLE: Zoom Executive Based in China Spied on Dissidents at the Behest of the Chinese Communist Party.
Related: The useful idiots of TikTok.
MELISSA MACKENZIE: BLUE DRESS PROOF. What it takes to get the media to believe a Democrat did wrong.
For a damaging story about a Democrat to be true, DNA must be found on a blue dress. There must be Blue Dress Proof™. It’s not enough to have a witness and a victim. It’s not enough to have a computer, a cache of validated emails, thousands of affadavits signed under the threat of perjury. There must be actual DNA, videotaped evidence. If the bad guy is a Democrat, there must be Blue Dress Proof.
For a damaging story about a Republican to be true, nothing has to be true at all. Third-hand hearsay about hookers and pee, a smile on a face, or a sarcastic tweet or phrase taken out of context can make even the most absurd conclusion be portrayed as fact and conveyed as truth in perpetuity. If the bad guy is a Republican, no proof is needed.
Read the whole thing.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. “Anti-Racist” Education Is Neither.
NEW YORK TIMES: ‘CALIPHATE’ PODCAST DIDN’T MEET STANDARDS.
The New York Times admitted Friday that it could not verify the claims of a Canadian man whose account of committing atrocities for the Islamic State in Syria was a central part of its 2018 podcast “Caliphate.”
The series was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and had won a Peabody Award, the first ever for a podcast produced by the newspaper. Peabody administrators said the Times would return the award.
With a major hole blown in the narrative, the Times affixed an audio correction to the beginning of each part of the 12-part podcast and published an investigation into what went wrong with the story in Friday’s newspaper. The story’s central reporter, Rukmini Callimachi, will be reassigned off the terrorism beat, the Times said.
Dean Baquet, the paper’s executive editor, said in a podcast distributed Friday that “this failing wasn’t about any one reporter. I think this was an institutional failing.”
From Howell Raines and Jayson Blair to the “1619 Project” having its lunch eaten by leftist historians to the crybully staff getting the vapors over a Tom Cotton op-ed with majority approval, the Times, in their efforts to expand the Gramscian Damage, sure have been having a lot of those over the past 20 years.
KEEP TEXAS RED: Texas is still a red state, but the it’s not the Republican stronghold it used to be.
I have a plan.
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH RALPH NADER IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Ralph Nader Slams Obama For Being A Phony: ‘Mass media interviewing Obama about his book. Couldn’t be softer.’
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines terrified of upsetting their former boss, and it all makes sense.
NEWS FROM MY WORLD: UT College of Law ranks 14th best value nationally. “The magazine also ranked the College of Law among the top 13 in the nation for students who want to study business law.”
ROGER SIMON: The ‘Deplorables’ Must Cement Control of the Republican Party.
Reading Glenn Reynolds’ heartening article in the NY Post —“It’s time for the ‘Deplorables’ to become the Unconquerables”—inspired me to say something I’ve been thinking for a while.
It’s time for the “Deplorables” fully to take over the Republican Party.
Some have suggested starting a new party—and I can understand that, given the frustrations—but why go to the trouble when you have the numbers to have all the power?
An existing party apparatus is sitting there and is there for the taking. Let’s do it.
Just to be clear—who do I mean by the “deplorables”?
They are the decent, hard-working Americans of all classes that revere our democratic republic and our founding documents and deplore (in the real sense of the word) the Deep State and the dominance of Washington DC over our lives.
They reject bureaucracy, the uni-party of insiders, and the dangerous Orwellian pervasiveness of Big Tech and its social media tentacles replete with censorship and thought control.
They also seek to preserve liberty and the capitalist system of open markets, while opposing, with all their strength, the incursions of socialism and communism into our country through the influence of the Communist Party of China and others on and in our media, religious institutions, entertainment and educational system.
Above all, they adamantly support our Bill of Rights with freedom of speech and worship and the right to bear arms impregnable.
As of now, these “deplorables” are at least seventy-four million strong—and are, in essence, more unified than any other group, even though sometimes they do not realize it.
This movement is only partly about Donald Trump. He can be looked upon as a founding father of this renewal of American values but, as he himself has said on multiple occasions, this is about us.
In any case, like all of us, Trump will not be here forever, even if he ultimately wins the 2020 election or runs again in 2024.
New leadership must be found and, in the tradition of Trump, we should be free to look outside the political class, just as our founders hoped.
In fact, that should be a hallmark of this renewed Republican Party, bringing forth candidates from all contributing walks of American life.
New perspectives will work to the benefit of all. In actuality, conservatives are the more natural innovators—as Trump demonstrated in the Middle East, for example—liberals and progressives the conformists.
This does not mean that professional politicians should necessarily be excluded. They should be evaluated, as all should be, and not given a laissez-passer to a position of power.
A good starting point in this evaluation of the existing political class is their reactions to the 2020 election. Those who quickly opted for a “business as usual” response that was and is not merited should be disdained and replaced.
Political power in our culture has become, has been for years, a passageway to wealth.
The new Republican Party should be the party Cincinattus, of those who come to serve the public good temporarily before returning to their private lives, not to profit from a lengthy sojourn in the nation’s capitol.
We should consequently encourage term limits.
In what now seems like a distant America, Democratic house speaker Tip O’Neill told us “All politics is local.” He was right then, but only partially right now in the internet age.
Nevertheless, we must act locally, taking over as many state and city Republican Party institutions as possible.
This must be begun immediately as the forces of reaction and stasis—call them RINOs, NeverTrumpers or whatever you want—are moving in quickly to take advantage of a likely illusory Biden victory.
These people have no leverage other than habit, the leverage of “being there” in party committees, think tanks, and so forth. It is a leverage that is paper thin and should be regarded as such.
While many are depressed over a stolen election, as Reynolds pointed out in his article, a rebirth can come from it. Whatever evil has occurred, we—the “deplorables”—have shown ourselves to be the most united force extant and the most powerful, should we choose to take it.
As Roger writes, “While many are depressed over a stolen election, as Reynolds pointed out in his article, a rebirth can come from it. Whatever evil has occurred, we—the ‘deplorables’—have shown ourselves to be the most united force extant and the most powerful, should we choose to take it.”
IN THE MAIL: Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UMich’s IT department told to stop using word ‘picnic,’ it could ‘harm morale.’
You know what’s worse for morale? Realizing you work with idiots who thing “picnic” is offensive.
OH, THE HUMANITY! America’s most prominent Native-American in the U.S. Senate has been snubbed by His Fraudulency for a cabinet post. Will Warren don warpaint?
TOM CRUISE RANT DUBBED INTO CLASSIC ‘RUDOLPH’ CLIP ON TWITTER:
Santa needs to get his mouth washed out with soap.
It was almost mission impossible, but a Twitter user managed to make Saint Nick spew Tom Cruise’s F-word-laced rant by dubbing the TV special “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer,” which first aired in 1964, Fox News reported.
“This is my December passion project,” wrote Jason Gallagher, who posted the hilarious mashup, which shows Santa flying off the handle a la Cruise in front of a cast of characters from the iconic show.
Looking on in apparent abject horror are Rudolph, the Abominable Snowman and Yukon Cornelius, among others.
On the flip-side, at Breitbart.com, veteran film critic John Nolte writes:
Two things are worthy of note here… If you listen to the entire audio, he never once says anything about PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE!!! YOU’RE KILLING PEOPLE!!! YOU’RE A SERIAL KILLER! There’s none of that BS, none of that anti-science, smug and sanctimonious emotional blackmail. What Cruise is worried about, and Mission: Impossible 7 was already shut down once due to a coronavirus outbreak, is everyone losing their jobs and homes.
On top of that, Cruise is saying that this film set represents the standard now being used throughout the industry, and that standard is allowing other productions to go back to work. So if the Mission: Impossible 7 standard fails, that could mean everyone gets shut down, and that’s a lot of jobs.
Listen, I made a living for 17 years as a corporate bill collector and have been at the wrong end of my own share of what we used to call Come To Jesus Meetings, and they were a lot worse than this. That doesn’t mean it’s right for Cruise to be calling everyone a “motherf***er,” but one thing I always appreciated about those Come To Jesus Meetings was the honesty. You knew where you stood. It was coming straight at you.
And let’s also not forget that this is not a “star tantrum.”
Cruise is a producer, a hands-on producer of this franchise. There’s $200 million he’s responsible for and everything about the guy’s reputation tells you he takes that responsibility seriously.
I can see Nolte’s point, but much of the public is listening to Cruise’s rant with two issues in mind. First as the late Cathy Seipp wrote at NRO in 2005 in a piece titled “California Screaming,” Hollywood superstars and executives often come equipped with serious anger issues, and thanks to clips like Cruise’s and former Batman star Christian Bale’s rant on the set of Terminator Salvation going viral on social media, moviegoers increasingly knows this:
Behind the New Age grin of beatific self-righteousness with which so many Hollywood celebrities greet the world often lurks a tantrum ready to erupt. When the full, roiling boil is over, the slow simmer can last for weeks, if not months. By comparison, old-style screamers can seem quaint, almost benign. The storm may have been intense, but it passed quickly. A classic of the type–the agent Norman Brokaw, for instance–could suggest lunch within minutes of a blowup. And the scream usually took the form of a statement: “Get outta here!”
But new-style screamers eschew declarative sentences for rhetorical, F. Lee Bailey-esque questions: “What were you thinking? Why did you even pick up the phone? Do you even have a brain?” This can be harder to bear. As an observer told me once, “If it’s ‘You’re fired,’ then at least you’re out. If it’s someone trying to teach you a lesson, you’re there, and you’re stuck.”
Some screamers can hardly utter a sentence that doesn’t contain the f-word. The syllable almost seems to function as their sound, signifying only that they are in the room. Others are more careful with their language, because being sworn at is the point where many screamees stop listening and may even quit. So bland, schoolmarmish words of displeasure are amplified to ear-splitting volume. A vein-popping “Un-ACC-EPT-able!” is a great favorite. Also, a drawn out “DIS…A…PPOINTED!!!”
When in full throttle, the classic Hollywood screamer cannot be neither stopped nor shamed. I once heard a story about a studio executive who screamed at someone’s assistant for a good five minutes before realizing he was in the wrong office–possibly even on the wrong floor. “Well, if you see her,” he yelled before stomping out, “tell her what I said!”
Screaming actors, it seems, can be easier to deal with, perhaps because they are not always famous for their brains. Many years ago, I read a story about how Roger Moore (a nonscreamer) took a younger actor aside and suggested he stop attacking everyone on the set. “I’m not in this business to win a popularity contest,” the screamer fumed. “I just want to be a good actor.”
“Well, you’ve failed at being a good actor,” Moore replied reasonably. “Why not try for the popularity contest?”
Then there’s the giant clam in the room, as America’s Newspaper of Record reported earlier this week: ‘We Must Follow The Science!’ Screams Actor Who Believes Xenu Dumped Frozen Aliens Into Volcanoes And Exploded Them With Bombs 75,000,000 Years Ago.
MORE CONSEQUENCES, PLEASE: ‘Black Affinity Coalition’ suspends strike after realizing there will be consequences. A strike is when people stop producing value. Students produce nothing of value. Perhaps withholding tuition would count, but students usually aren’t the ones paying that.
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