THE RACIST BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: Biden State Appointee Says White Diplomats Are Too ‘Protective’ of United States.
BECAUSE LOCKDOWNS ARE UNSCIENTIFIC AND DON’T WORK? Why has Macron decided against a new lockdown in France?
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
● Shot: Storm Orlena: New York City and New Jersey issue state of emergency ahead of heavy snow.
—The London Independent, today.
● Chaser: Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.
—The London Independent, March 20th, 2000.
A Practical Wish List for Joe Biden. Some doable libertarian ideas from Reason’s writers and editors.
PARTY OF THE LITTLE GUY™ Lockdown has ravaged the working class.
CRIME, LIKE ANTIFA, IS JUST AN IDEA: Soft on Crime. A Biden administration policy of weak policing and lax prosecution would be a disaster for the nation’s cities.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: American Universities Declare War on Military History: Academics seem to have forgotten that the best way to avoid conflict is to study it.
To be honest, given what’s happened to the discipline of history in recent decades, maybe it’s better this way.
WITH ANY OTHER PRESIDENT — CERTAINLY ANY DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT — THIS WOULD BE A HUGE DEAL: Trump Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize over Israel/UAE Deal. By an Estonian legislator.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Intriguing – Palm Beach to Decide Whether Trump Can Live in the Building He Owns.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: When is the owner of a property merely a guest on that property?
Answer: Palm Beach is going to get back to you on that one.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Voter suppression is in the I of the FB
- Sometimes the roads fall off
- Kristen Cenoweth self-cancels with the most embarrassing Dem-worship ever
Bonus Sanity: Jared Kushner nominated for a much-deserved Nobel Peace Prize.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
WHO’S THE NAZI NOW? Penn prof who used Nazi salute to protest perceived lack of free speech resigns.
IT WASN’T ANTI-RACISM: Asian-American Activists Blast Biden’s ‘Pandering’ Anti-Racism Order.
Biden signed an order to combat “racism, xenophobia, and intolerance against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders” on Tuesday. The order—which requires federal agencies to fight anti-Asian racism and promote “sensitivity” toward the Asian community in their pandemic response—was met with skepticism by some activists. Kenny Xu, an activist and author of an upcoming book, An Inconvenient Minority, called the order mere lip service aimed at progressives.
“I can see this whole issue of COVID racism being used as a way to satiate Asian-American victimhood mentality,” Xu said. “At the same time, the order is not addressing some real policy-based issues that Asian Americans face on a practical and actionable level.”
Xu and other activists worry that despite its pro-Asian-American rhetoric, the Biden administration will undo some of the Trump White House’s initiatives to combat anti-Asian racism. Chief among their concerns is the issue of affirmative action, which critics say rejects qualified Asian candidates to make room for other minority groups at elite institutions.
Message sent: Democrats aren’t interested in assimilated minorities.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, BAIT-AND-SWITCH EDITION: Georgia college changes class theme to ‘gender and sexuality’ AFTER students enroll.
IT’S DIFFERENT NOW BECAUSE SHUT UP, FAT: Critics Who Called Trump ‘Authoritarian’ Are Silent On Biden’s Executive Order Spree. “This lack of reaction by the left comes after journalists, pundits, politicians, and other notable Trump critics spent years condemning Trump for using his federal authority to sign executive orders and execute his agenda. Beginning even before his time in office, Trump critics claimed democracy and the United States were threatened by the potential for him to pen executive orders.”
NOW OUT FROM TODD HENDERSON: State of Shock. I very much enjoyed the first book in this series. This is #2.
The Kindle version is here.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Pathetic Republican Squishes Are Learning It’s Still Trump’s Party. “The moderate/left/LincolnProjectPedo wing (all 35 of them) of the GOP is insistent that the Republican hoi polloi reject all things Trump and do whatever they can to make The New York Times say nice things about them on occasion. Their dream GOP is a grandstanding bunch of mush that never really accomplishes anything or directly addresses the concerns of the people who elect them.”
DEATH OF A CITY: The Portland Story?
AND LATELY IT SEEMS THAT THEY ALWAYS DO: David Mamet Explains What Happens When the Experts Fail.
UH-HUH: WhatsApp says new biometric features are nothing to worry about.
A Facebook account is not required to use WhatsApp, but whenever the update goes live, users must agree to grant Facebook access to metadata including IP addresses, user location, battery level, and IMEI numbers, or the permanent identifier associated with a smartphone.
“Trust us” — WhatsApp has gone on the defensive, trying to emphasize that Facebook cannot read users’ communications, nor does it keep logs of location data or private messages. But Facebook hasn’t been clear what it intends to use the collected metadata for. It could potentially be used to target users in advertisements. User data collected by Facebook has been misused in the past, such as to hide housing advertisements from users in poorer locales or target political ads discouraging certain demographics from voting.
Facebook hasn’t earned a whole lot of trust (cough, cough), and WhatsApp’s privacy-minded co-founders left shortly after selling to Facebook.
WHY DO YOU THINK THEY’RE RINGING THE CAPITOL WITH FENCES AND TROOPS? H.R. 127 – A Catalog of Gun Control Awfulness. Those hiding behind armed soldiers want to disarm the rest of us because reasons.
HA. NOT ME. Why Some Men Are Still Wearing Suits to Work from Home.
LAST YEAR was all about shlumpy sweatpants, plush house slippers and mundane Zoom shirts. As many Americans shifted to working from home—and later trickled back into offices—our wardrobes took a hard left turn into the world of casual wear. But even as elastic waists and jersey became de rigueur for a chunk of the corporate class, a smaller portion of WFH men—let’s call them tailoring holdouts—continue to cling to their blazers, suits and neckties like life rafts in a tumultuous year. These men found comfort in their sartorial formality, even if they never want to be labeled “the tie guy” on Zoom calls ever again.
What’s behind this tailoring commitment? For starters, many of these suit stalwarts are nagged by a feeling that they must maintain some level of decorum even from home. Last summer, months after the pandemic’s onset, Shawn Sukumar, 37, a trial lawyer in Washington, D.C., had his court hearings moved to video call. Though none of his superiors or others on-high specified a dress code, he felt it best to toe the line and wear his suit and tie on the calls. He believes you should look polished when speaking before a court—even digitally. And if you’re wondering: No, he never wore anything but full trousers with his sport coat even though he was only shown from the waist up. No shorts. Certainly no boxers. “I don’t trust the video on that. I wear pants every time.”
But for online teaching, I wear the same thing I do for in-person teaching — a nice sportcoat and a dress or polo shirt. I decided early on to do that out of respect for the students.
JOSH KRAUSHAAR: Biden Isn’t Living Up To His Bipartisan Promises.
Do tell.
Related: Senator Cassidy: No, The White House Never Reached Out To Republicans On COVID Relief Bill.
GOT AN HOUR?: This documentary on Thomas Sowell, hosted by Jason Riley, was definitely worth my time. Maybe yours too.
PREJUDICE UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: Does the popular race Implicit Association Test stand up to careful scrutiny?
THE ALIENS AREN’T GOING TO BE TOO HAPPY WHEN THEY LEARN THE NAVY IS PATENTING THEIR INVENTIONS: The Navy Just Filed Patents for New Unbelievable Superweapons. “In 2019, the U.S. Navy’s Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) filed a number of seemingly out of this world patents that could, in theory, revolutionize not only military aviation, but just about everything. Chief among these strange new inventions is a High Energy Electromagnetic Field Generator, which if functional, could produce massive amounts of power with far reaching military and commercial implications. Interestingly, the patent also closely resembles longstanding theories posited by UFO researchers about the means of propulsion seemingly employed by alien visitors to our world.”
THE CRUSHING OF DISSENT WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES: Colorado Relieves John Eastman Of His Duties, Chapman Bars Him From Speaking At Law Review Symposium He Organized; Eastman Speaks At Arizona State Federalist Society Event Despite Opposition From Students And Dean.
DO OUMUAMUANS DO EVERYTHING IN THREES? Harvard’s Avi Loeb more sure than ever we were visited by alien spacecraft. “The renowned scientist made waves claiming the interstellar object Oumuamua might be extraterrestrial. Now he’s doubling down.”
SHOCKER: Biden brood already cashing in on Joe’s presidency.
They can’t quit the grift. No sooner had Joe Biden won the White House than his family went back to trying to make a buck off his name.
The latest sordid example involves one of Joe’s younger brothers, Frank Biden, appearing in a Florida law firm’s ad — on Inauguration Day no less. The ad used the president’s name to draw attention to the Berman Law Group’s class-action suit against sugar cane growers.
“The two Biden brothers have long held a commitment to pushing environmental issues to the forefront,” says the ad. “The president-elect has vowed to rejoin the Paris Agreement and wants to set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.”
The ad, first reported by CNBC, appeared in the Daily Business Review and carried a picture of Frank Biden and quotes him saying, “My brother is a model for how to go about doing this work.”
How touching. And shameless.
After the enormous political trouble Hunter Biden’s shady business ties caused during the campaign, Frank’s bid to piggy-back on Joe’s election sounds especially reckless. But here’s another way to look at it.
Biden family members are oblivious to conflicts and criticism because they’ve been swimming in swamp corruption for decades. The two brothers, Frank and Jim, and Hunter have made millions and millions based on selling the perception of access to Joe’s power.
Having gotten rich and gotten away with it, why quit now? Joe is no longer one of 100 senators or just the vice president. Now he’s the “big guy.” Ka-ching!
Yep.
THEY’RE RIGHT, OF COURSE: Asian-American Activists Blast Biden’s ‘Pandering’ Anti-Racism Order.
THE CANCELLATIONS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES: Professor fired for “racism.”
THE TECHNOCRACY HAS BEEN A SHAMBLES IN ACTION: Jim Meigs: Why the Vaccine Distribution Went Badly.
I predicted last year that even if we had a vaccine developed in record time, the logistics of actually getting it in people’s arms would mean it would be spring before enough people were vaccinated. Some of that is because it’s hard. Some of it is because the people in charge are incompetents.
WELL, YES: Biden is failing on COVID by the standards he set as a candidate.
President Biden contends that there is “nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months” — which is the exact opposite of what presidential candidate Joe Biden promised voters during the 2020 campaign. Candidate Biden’s plan said that “the trajectory of COVID-19 in America is headed in the wrong direction,” and only he could fix it.
The Biden “plan” amounted to a slew of nebulous promises that would be implemented to correct the “Trump fiasco,” such as accelerating the development of a vaccine, producing more masks and pressuring governors to sign mask mandates. Biden repeatedly promised to alter the trajectory of COVID-19. In a platitudinous Oct. 23 speech, Biden pledged to “immediately put in place a national strategy that will position our country to finally get ahead of this virus and get back our lives.”
“Immediately” is an adverb meaning at once, instantly. It doesn’t mean waiting around to take credit for when the Trump-era vaccines kick in.
Biden continually underestimated the speed with which medical technology would move. Every time former President Donald Trump promised that a vaccine would be available by the end of the year, “fact-checkers” were deployed to claim this was a lie. By Dec. 23, the United States led the world in vaccinations, with more than a million people vaccinated.
Well, the press is even worse at its job than Biden is at his.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Evergreen:
I DO THE SUNDAY THING TO PROMOTE INDIE AUTHORS: Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike and Book Promo.
Although, honestly, I don’t require they be indie. On the other hand the fact they’re willing to associate with my blog means most of them aren’t brain-dead-left.
THE MEDIA ARE FOR THE BODY POLITIC WHAT THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY IS FOR THE BODY PHYSICAL: How media monetized polarization.
NO I WON’T: You Will Be Made to Believe Implausible Things.
I’ll believe my lying eyes and point and make duck noises at the idiots.
I REALIZED THAT ABOUT A YEAR AGO: The West is reverting to paganism.
And also that it’s a really bad idea.
IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THINK: Systemic Contingencies – They All Knew – Lessons From Spygate About Severity of DC Corruption.
WHEN DID THE WORLD BECOME KINDERGARTEN? UN WHO Asks Rich Nations to Pause Covid Vaccination, so Others can Catch Up.
ONLY IF WE WANT AMERICA TO SURVIVE: Let’s Hope Biden Fails.
SO, HE’S A DEMOCRAT: Cuomo Blames Everyone Else For Death By COVID.
WELL, THEY’RE THE PEOPLE DEMOCRATS CARE ABOUT: Terrorists Can Get A COVID-19 Vaccine Before Grandma Does.
WELL, SHE HAS A LOT OF IT TO SPARE: Joy Behar Offers Stupidity To Fix Schools.
IT’S NOT BULLSHIT, IT’S UTTER STATISM: Brian Stelter: It’s Not Censorship, It’s Harm Reduction.
The question is has Brian Stelter now or ever been American?
I’M LIKING THE CUT OF HIS GIB: Cruz Calls For Scrutiny of Platforms That Halted GameStop Trading.
OH FOR THE LOVE OF BOB: State Dept Spox: ‘Largest Threat to U.S. National Security are U.S. Cops’.
January 31, 2021
MARK JUDGE: Addiction Is Counterfeit Worship, Often Driven by Shame. “The shame storm I endured at the hands of those trying to keep Kavanaugh off the court? That had nothing to to with the truth or guilt and innocence. It was simply a lynch mob at work.”
Plus: “The more online shame cycles you observe, the more obvious the pattern becomes: Everyone comes up with a principled-sounding pretext that serves as a barrier against admitting to themselves that, in fact, all they have really done is joined a mob.”
NEW YORK POST: Double Standards Abound at The New York Times.
To be fair, without them it would have no standards at all.
NO SPACE ADMIRALS FOR NOW: U.S. Space Force mostly sticking with Air Force ranks. “The only change the Space Force made is in four categories of Air Force enlisted ranks called ‘airman.’ The equivalent ranks in the Space Force will be ‘specialist.’ All the officers’ ranks stay the same as the Air Force, said the Jan. 29 memo. The new ranks are effective Feb. 1.”
I guess “Spaceman Spiff” would have been more than they could handle.
Since the Space Force was established in December 2019, officials had been internally debating whether to create a new rank structure to set the space branch apart from its parent service, the Air Force.
Discussions ground to a halt in June after the House of Representatives passed an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act requiring the Space Force to use the Navy’s rank structure.
The use of Navy ranks was proposed by former Navy SEAL Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas). His proposal was nicknamed the “Starfleet amendment” and drew attention after William Shatner wrote an op-ed calling on the Space Force to adopt the Star Trek naval ranks for its officers and enlisted personnel.
The Senate version of the NDAA did not include the provision on naval ranks. In a compromise bill, the House agreed to strike the language. The NDAA directed the secretary of the Air Force to brief committees on the Space Force’s recommended rank structure for officers and enlisted personnel at least 15 days prior to implementation.
A rare defeat for Captain Kirk.
SPREADING MISINFORMATION:
Yeah, there’s plenty of misinformation spread, but only some people are held accountable.
TAMARA KEEL: What gun for a dinosaur?
I GET LOOKED AT BY A DERMATOLOGIST EVERY YEAR: The heated debate over skin cancer screenings, explained. Note, too, that exposure to UV light turns out to be overrated as a source of skin cancer.
GOOD, BECAUSE REMDESIVIR HAS BEEN UNIMPRESSIVE: Plitidepsin found to work better than remdesivir for treating COVID-19.
WALL STREET JOURNAL: Speech and Sedition in 2021.
Most Americans learn in school about flagship political excesses in U.S. history like Joe McCarthy’s 1950s inquisitions, the post-World War I Red Scare and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Yet a recent Washington Post opinion piece purports to explain “what the 1798 Sedition Act got right.”
The law banned a wide range of political speech and publication. It was passed by the ruling Federalists to suppress the rival Democratic-Republicans, whom they saw as seditious. The Post piece argues that though their solution was “flawed,” the Federalists had reason to worry about “unregulated freedom of the press.”
We highlight this as one example among many of the emerging appetite for viewpoint suppression among journalists, intellectuals and Democrats in the wake of the Trump Presidency. They increasingly see domestic enemies wherever they look, and are devising ways to use levers of power to restrict, regulate and boycott opposition. It’s an extraordinary and ominous turn in a democracy. . . .
Much of American journalism, which was supposed to revert to its historic role as a check on those in power after Donald Trump left town, is now devoted to shutting down the commercial lifeline of other media. Think of the precedent for the next populist Republican President who might declare pro-choice publications “deadly.”
The trend arrives when one party runs nearly all of Washington and has the loud support of virtually every elite cultural institution and many of the largest corporations. Social-media firms increasingly respond to government pressure in content decisions. With progressives filling out the administrative state, expect politicians and regulators to find new ways to put their thumb on the scale.
There are already calls for the Federal Communications Commission to revive the Fairness Doctrine that enforced speech rules when there were three dominant TV networks. It died in the 1980s. The Axios website complained that “the U.S. government has done next to nothing to regulate misinformation on large tech platforms,” and the founder of the liberal fact-checker Politifact floated “regulations and new laws” to marginalize right-wing media.
It’s clear that their only real objection to McCarthyism was that McCarthy was on the other side.
Related: When Resistance Became Sedition and Sedition Became Resistance.
MEDIA DISHONESTY KILLED THOUSANDS, MAYBE MORE: Roger Simon: How the Hydroxychloroquine Scandal Wrecked America and the World Along With It.
I accuse—in no particular order—Time’s ‘Person of the Year’ nominee and frequent Wuhan, China visitor/collaborator Dr. Anthony Fauci; the Democrat Party (aka the “party of science”) and their nauseating, self-congratulatory leadership; the mainstream media and all their pompous, even more self-congratulatory “ships at sea” from the New York Times to CNN; Dr. Birx and whatever bureaucrat from the CDC was showing his/her face this week; the endless echo chamber in practically every health department in all fifty states; the foreign health departments that largely echoed that echo chamber; Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York (more of him in a moment); Governor Whitmer of Michigan; that atrocious governor of Nevada whose name I can’t remember or bother to look up…. I could go on… all of whom participated in what has emerged to be what is indisputably the greatest national, no, international, health disaster of our time—the Hydroxychloroquine Scandal.
This shameful distortion of medical science was emblematic of how politics not only crept into the treatment of the CCP virus, it bludgeoned that treatment and resulted in untold thousands, perhaps millions, of deaths while simultaneously making life unbearable for an even greater number across the globe—in fact, for practically everyone.
All of those mentioned above either dismissed or heavily downplayed “hydroxy”—a cheap anti-malarial drug, also used for lupus, that had been around for decades and is known to have minimal side effects—for the treatment of COVID-19.
Why? As most of us are aware, a man they thought an ogre, whom they despised, who knew nothing of science, recommended it—President Donald J. Trump—so it had to be disdained.
And yet hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) apparently did and does work in many instances, if taken early in the illness.
This was known way back in June 2020 when the esteemed British medical journal Lancet retracted its support of a dubious study it had published opposing the use of HCQ.
“We all entered this collaboration to contribute in good faith and at a time of great need during the COVID-19 pandemic. We deeply apologise to you, the editors, and the journal readership for any embarrassment or inconvenience that this may have caused.”
This apology, made eight months ago, was largely ignored by the mainstream media because it didn’t fit their narrative. And, worse yet, it might have benefited the nefarious Trump.
At the same time, many independent doctors were insisting that HCQ was working for them with real patients. They were similarly dismissed by a rabid press that had neither the inclination nor skills to investigate. (Laura Ingraham, to her credit, featured several of these doctors on her cable show.)
Meanwhile, thousands, if not millions, died across the globe who needn’t have.
How many we will never know but it’s a safe assumption a good number could have been spared.
The pervasive use of this drug might not have entirely saved us from COVID, but it could arguably have reduced the pandemic to the level of a bad year of flu.
Whatever the truth, an apposite description for what happened might be outrageous.
And now the equally-esteemed American Journal of Medicine in its January 2021 edition has finally admitted the same thing. HCQ often worked. Immediate administration of the drug while the patient was still at home showed significant benefits, they said.
Where were they during the Year of the Pandemic?
Oh, never mind. Politics is more important.
The lesson of the past year is that politics is apparently more important than any loyalty to professionalism that anyone in our professions might possess. (I took hydroxychloroquine, doxycycline, and zinc when I had Covid, starting early.)
MANY PROMINENT ATTORNEYS AND OTHER FIGURES DONATED TO THE LINCOLN PROJECT. WILL THEY ASK FOR THEIR MONEY BACK? 21 Men Accuse Lincoln Project Co-Founder of Online Harassment. “Many of them described feeling preyed upon by an influential older man in the field in which they wanted to work, and believing they had to engage with his repeated messaging or lose a professional opportunity. Mr. Weaver sent overt sexual solicitations to at least 10 of the men and, in the most explicit messages, offered professional and personal assistance in exchange for sex.”
Gordon Getty and Stephen Mandel gave a million dollars apiece.
Plus: “His solicitations included sending messages to a 14-year-old.”
DON SURBER IS NOT AMUSED: No, Jonah, it’s on you. “As a grown man, I do not seek the approval of those who hate me. I will not accommodate their efforts to ruin me and my country.”
WELL, IF YOU TALK ABOUT IT YOU GET BANNED ON FACEBOOK: The Coup We Are Not Talking About: We can have democracy, or we can have a surveillance society, but we cannot have both.
Overwrought, overwritten, and full of lefty misinformation, but the headline point above is correct.
EVIDENCE? WHAT’S THAT? The Trump ‘Incitement’ Narrative About the Capitol Riot is Falling Apart Before Our Very Eyes. “It should be noted further that allegations of election “fraud” are not incitement. Indeed, the same mainstream media accusing Trump of ‘inciting’ the crowd with fraud allegations accused Donald Trump himself of perpetrating fraud in the 2016 election.”
As far as I can tell, the “incitement” narrative boils down to this: We know Trump’s an awful person, and we know his followers are awful people, so even if he says “peaceful” we know he actually expects them to break into the Capitol because reasons.
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: WHO Director Who Covered for China to Be Harvard Commencement Speaker.
OLD AND BUSTED: We Are All Socialists Now.
—The Washington Post, through then-subsidiary publication Newsweek, February 16th, 2009.
The New Hotness? Opinion: The good guys in the GameStop story? It’s the hedge funds and short sellers.
—The Washington Post, yesterday.
Earlier: GameStop Politics: Democrats’ Hubris And Abusiveness Will Lead To Their Own Short Squeeze. “There’s some political equivalent here. I don’t know what it looks like yet, but there’s only so long the rapid destruction of jobs and the economy and political persecution can continue without the political equivalent of a short squeeze on Democrats.”
THE GREATEST HOLLYWOOD MEMOIR EVER WRITTEN:
Lowe never made it as far as Cruise, but he was right there beside dozens of figures who helped define our culture. Through his stepfather he was invited onto the set, in 1976, to watch an effects sequence from a movie he was told was going to be some sort of “Western in space” — Star Wars. He rode a plane — Flight 77 from Dulles to LAX — with the 9/11 terrorists who used that trip as a dry run two weeks before they hijacked the same flight. Less momentous, he once saw Chris Farley eat two giant porterhouse steaks for dinner, placing an entire pat of butter on each bite. One of the first friends Lowe made when, as an adolescent, his mom moved them from Ohio to Malibu (then peopled by middle-class hippies and surfers) was Emilio Estevez, whose dad was off in the Philippines shooting a Vietnam movie. Lowe first met Emilio’s dad, Martin Sheen, on a Halloween night when the old man jumped out of the bushes, Captain Willard–like, in full camouflage gear, brandishing a baseball bat and issuing crazy threats. It was pure coincidence that Sheen would later be hired to play the president beside Lowe on The West Wing.
That show had a cultural impact, just as Lowe’s early efforts did. He points out that The Outsiders (1983) not only kicked off a new genre of all-teen movies after a decade in which young people were largely relegated to background parts but provided a raft of new male pinups to star in them: Matt Dillon (who was already somewhat established) plus then-unknowns C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Estevez, Cruise, and Lowe. Proud of his efforts in that film (even though his climactic scene at the very end was simply cut out), Lowe nevertheless has a knack for undercutting showbiz hype with dry wit. And he’s well aware of how fortunate he has been. Auditioning for Class, Lowe had to win the part over another hopeful:
My competition is an actor who is one of those guys who gets white-hot overnight and is in the mix on a number of big films. He has everyone in Hollywood talking, and I just hope he doesn’t get this one. His name is Raphael Sbarge.
But I haven’t gotten to the most important aspect of the book: how Lowe learned to be a man, a husband, a father — a person as opposed to a celebrity. He was presented with more temptations than most of us can imagine, allowed himself to be led down a path of self-destruction that proved irresistible to many of his contemporaries, then found a way back. Once a pretty boy/party boy, he became a grounded family man of deep commitment and contentment, a process that required a personality overhaul. That story is worth a column in itself, so I’ll get to it in a follow-up piece.
Read the whole thing.
If America is a clown country, the ruling class on Wall Street, along with their ruling class friends in Washington, are driving the clown car.
Enter Reddit.
You might have noticed that the suits are very upset this week. That’s because anonymous Redditors, while presumably brushing the Cheeto dust off their laptop keyboards, decided to do a little bit of stock speculation.
They had no fancy tools, no quantitative analysis, no Bloomberg terminals, and they’re certainly not members of the elite class who are entitled to engage in such sophisticated business.
What they did have was unbridled rage and disdain for the drivers of the clown car, and when they found a way to exploit them, they hijacked the clown car for themselves and took it for an epic joyride.
Reddit realized that a billionaire member of the Wall Street ruling class had a massive short position on GameStop stock—position that was coming due on Friday—and they decided to stick it to him. They bought thousands of shares of the fledgling stock, driving the price per share up approximately a gazillion percent.
That was bad news for Mr. Moneybags. It was, and perhaps still is, going to cost his fund, Melvin Capital, billions of dollars to cover his short position.
It was great news for the newly-minted Reddit stock speculators. As more and more people bought, the price of the stock increased. Regular people were making cash hand over fist, and sharing “Wolf of Wall Street” memes on Twitter. The peasant class’ revolt against their rulers was both lucrative and fun.
But if there’s anything the ruling class hates, it’s losing money—especially to a bunch of unwashed punks who were laughing in their faces while they sent Melvin Capital hurtling towards bankruptcy. In an instant, the rightful owners of the clown car demanded it back.
Read the whole thing.
Related: Can’t stop the signal: Silver price surges as GameStop traders move into precious metals.
KING SOLOMON-ERA ROYAL PURPLE CLOTH FOUND: In Southern Israel, carbon-dated to around 1,000 BC, which puts it in the time of King Solomon.
HOW IT STARTED: Defunding the police: Oakland, Berkeley could be test cases for Bay Area, nation.
—The San Francisco Chronicle, July 21st, 2020.
How it’s going: Shootings in Oakland soar as cuts to Police Department take hold.
—The San Francisco Chronicle, today.
WUHAN CORONAVIRUS SUPPLY CHAIN LESSONS: Food export restrictions by a few countries could skyrocket global food crop prices.
The paper is here.
“PLEASE ENJOY THIS PRESS RELEASE:” New York Times Celebrates Kamala Stepdaughter as ‘Breakout Star’ Model.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): It’s all rigged.
WAS IT OVER WHEN THE GERMANS PLANTED LAND MINES IN WEST VIRGINIA?
Enter [Kamala] Harris and what one of my Democratic sources called a “ham-handed” interview on local West Virginia television Thursday. It was clearly meant to up the pressure on Manchin to support Biden’s package, but it only antagonized him. “I couldn’t believe it,” Manchin said in a video that went viral Saturday. “No one called me [about it]. … We’re going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward … but we need to work together. That’s not a way of working together, what was done.”
I’m told Manchin also conveyed his displeasure privately to senior White House officials late last week. Another head-scratcher in all this: Harris isn’t exactly popular in West Virginia. And in the interview, she referred to “abandoned land mines” instead of “abandoned mine lands” in West Virginia, a slip-up sure to cause eye rolls in the state.
And out of the state as well, though it looks like she’s settling in nicely with team gaffe-o-matic.
THERE ARE SO MANY CASES TO BE MADE: The Conservative Case Against the Boomers.
BETTER THEM THAN US: Iran expects first batch of Russian vaccine by Feb 4.
IS BIDEN BANNING “FARTING COWS AND AIRPLANES?” BIG, IF TRUE: Green New Deal Architect AOC Takes Credit for Biden’s Climate Boondoggle.
HIGHER EDUCATION TODAY: Chaired Professor Resigns From Kansas Law Faculty After Withholding Student Grades In Overload Pay Dispute. “Valdez, who is Latina, calls KU’s actions ‘pure and simple retaliation’ and discrimination.”
I’m sure she’ll be a fine and evenhanded District Attorney.
QUESTION ASKED: Is karma coming calling for Killer Cuomo?
WHY IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUCH A CESSPIT OF HARASSMENT? 21 Men Accuse Lincoln Project Co-Founder of Online Harassment.
To their credit, a “senior advisor” to the Lincoln Party has responded to the above New York Times article with an articulate, carefully worded, highly-nuanced statement:
THE EXCITING LIFE OF REINDEER LICHENS: Reindeer lichens reproduce sexually far more than scientists thought.
HOW CAN WE MISS YOU, IF YOU WON’T GO AWAY? Howie Carr: John Kerry’s back, in all of his tone-deaf glory.
“I had the pleasure of driving down to the inauguration in an electric car, a Tesla, back down to Washington and back to the United — to to ah Massachusetts uh and it was great. I loved it.”
A Tesla! America’s Gigolo has come a long way from his on-the-arm Buick, compliments of Bob Brest. Does Tesla have a dealership on the Lynnway like Bob Brest did?
Funny, though, how Kerry almost blurts out that D.C. isn’t really America (not that Massachusetts is these days either; it’s more like East Germany, or maybe Hoxha’s Albania).
By the way, Washington is 439 miles from Boston. Top range for one of those coal-fired Teslas is about 400 miles, and cold weather reduces it further.
Did anyone see Liveshot recharging his Tesla’s lithium batteries at, say, the Vince Lombardi rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike while he partook of a snack with the hoi polloi at the local Pizza Hut or Quizno’s?
“Can I get me a recharge here?”
Dementia Joe Biden’s incoherence appears to be contagious, and at the press conference the 77-year-old Kerry seemed to have been infected. All dialogue guaranteed verbatim:
“And we don’t have to have uh you know the the burning of a fuel uh which uh uh clearly contributes to a scientifically-arrived-at conclusion about the warming of the planet and the dangers to this planet. This is so logical uh I I don’t understand the opposition. I don’t think there’s any gain in it politically.”
What’s a few hundred thousand jobs, not to mention tossing away the national security provided by not being dependent on foreign energy sources?
Even Kerry had to acknowledge that he’s on a fool’s errand.
“We could go to zero (emissions) tomorrow,” he admitted, “and the problem isn’t solved.”
But who cares? The important thing is that as “climate czar,” Kerry will likely be flying around on his own publicly funded jet, in place of his second wife’s aging Flying Squirrel. And he’ll get motorcades. He’s already pontificating again about how he was “deeply involved in the Paris negotiations” and how significant “the Montreal protocols” are.
I don’t want to hear another word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Scandinavian Heavy Metal Sumo Knitting and the Death of Non-Conformity.
Joe Biden recently nominated Dr. Rachel Levine to become the first transsexual something-or-other to serve as federal something-or-other in the Department of Health and Human Services. GLAAD praised this courageous choice by President Biden, pointing out that 19% of trans-sexuals have no health insurance. Which obviously explains Mr. Biden’s selection of Dr. Levine. I mean, there you go.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that he’s less interested in transsexual health insurance than he is in the perception of diversity in his administration, which these days, has become much more complex than having a certain percentage of blacks in every photo-op.
I don’t know. It’s complicated.
I’m not sure anybody on the left plans past next week. But if they do, I wonder where they see this going? What will a diverse presidential cabinet look like in 10 years? 20 years? Once David Bowie is president, who the heck do you nominate as Assistant Something-or-Other in the Department of Health and Human Services?
And at what point do people just lose interest in all this, jaded from decades of increasingly earnest efforts at ridiculous insincerity? Will we return to the ’80s, when such people would earn a roll of the eyes rather than a presidential cabinet appointment?
Read the whole thing.
“DESPISED:” The Left and the Working Class.
George Bernard Shaw, though a Fabian socialist, brushed aside anyone who called him a “friend of the working classes.” He scoffed that he “had no other feeling for the working classes than an intense desire to abolish them and replace them by sensible people.” A century ago Britain’s Labour Party brought together the Fabians (who supplied the policy wonks) and the trade unions (who supplied the voters). The party had been founded to give working people a voice in politics, but gradually control passed to the university-educated, who were internationalist, technocratic and supremely confident that they could plan the future.
Then came two awful shocks. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, the Remainers won the affluent vote, but the working classes carried the Leavers to victory. And in the 2019 parliamentary election, the Tories swept depressed factory towns that had heretofore been safe for Labour. “You can’t trust the people,” snorted novelist Howard Jacobson. That’s what happens when the rabble are “given this new confidence in their own opinions.”
Paul Embery might be called a populist in America, but a more accurate label is “left conservative.” A firefighter, union official and lifelong Labour activist, he writes for the resolutely unorthodox webpaper UnHerd. And in “Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class,” he suggests that Bernard Shaw’s enormous condescension is now the dominant ideology of the progressive intelligentsia, which embraces every subcategory of identity politics except class identity. The endless squabbling among fractious identity groups “serves only to fragment the working class and undermine what should be the primary goal of developing common bonds and building the maximum unity required to defend its interests.” Somehow, “inclusivity” doesn’t include the workers.
Mr. Embery protests that the British tradition of vigorous debate—deeply rooted in union halls and worker-education classes as well as in Parliament—has given way to “echo chambers, ‘safe spaces’ and draconian hate legislation, all of which serve the purpose of suppressing unwelcome opinions and enforcing an official orthodoxy.” Arguably the stifling began when Tony Blair told the Labour Party that globalization was not open to discussion: “You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer.” . . .
Uncontrolled immigration displaces low-pay workers or depresses their wages. Cambridge economist Robert Rowthorn calculated that immigration may grow the national economy in the long run, but new jobs created always lag behind new entrants into the labor market. Those hurt most are often immigrants who arrived earlier (which may explain why 60% of U.K. migrants and their children want to reduce immigration, and why so many Hispanics voted for Donald Trump ). Brexit was supported by about a third of nonwhite voters, who noticed that, under EU policy, Poles could more easily enter Britain than Jamaicans.
You probably won’t agree with all of Mr. Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves. “Despised” makes a compelling case that “global governance” is radically incompatible with democracy, civil liberties and broadly shared prosperity. Supranational agencies like the EU inevitably concentrate power in unresponsive bureaucracies and concentrate wealth in multinational corporations. The left should have resisted their rise, but conservatives too were slow to recognize that globalization subverted everything they valued: traditional communities, patriotism, religious faith, stable families, unintrusive government and personal freedom. Mr. Embery’s goal is to build a society where citizens no longer feel like colonial subjects in their own country. He reminds us that the British exited the EU due to “the desire for self-government and sovereignty”—the same reason that the Irish and the Indians exited the British Empire.
Indeed. People want those things here, too.
RUSS SMITH: Payday Publishers — The future of journalism is right under your nose.
Lots of journalists, I’d guess, saw the unintentional rib-tickler Guardian story last Saturday about the down-for-the-count Rolling Stone offering “thought leaders” to publish in its pages—for a fee of $2000. Man, that takes “sponsored content” (RS owner Penske Media Corporation took pains to note that these “sold” articles would be labeled as such, in order to differentiate them from the other stories, which, as always, might be viewed as free ads) to a new level! I’ve no idea what success the magazine will have in attracting “big names”—pardon, “thought leaders”—to the last-ditch revenue gambit, but it’s not much of a draw. After all, who reads Rolling Stone in 2021?
(An early subscriber, a year after Jann Wenner launched RS in 1967, I couldn’t wait for the new issue to arrive, up until about 1974. When the magazine moved from San Francisco to New York in 1976, and shamelessly sucked up to the Jimmy Carter campaign, blowing Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell, I moved to sporadic reading; by 1985, when Spin was far more vital in critiquing music and pop culture, I stopped reading almost completely, occasionally picking up a copy at newsstands, like RS a vestige of the 20th century.)
My friend and colleague Crispin Sartwell touched on this subject in September 2019, disparaging the daily ghost-written op-ed columns in major newspapers. (He jokingly added that such promotional drivel was depriving real writers—like him!—from landing on once-prestigious pages.) Sartwell ticked off the names of politicians or celebrities whose byline was attached to anodyne, agenda-driven essays that added little to the publications: people like Jane Fonda, Rahm Emanuel, Lindsey Graham, Leon Panetta, Cindy McCain, Liz Cheney, Rashida Tlaib, Mitch McConnell, James Comey and on and on and on. He wrote: “Even if your own columnists fail… that doesn’t mean that you should allow your newspaper to be directly annexed to someone’s political career or publicity machine.”
I’d wager if Crispin were to re-visit the subject today, he’d come to the same conclusion as me: in the near-future—as I noted, Rolling Stone matters little, but its gimmick will have ramifications—ghost-written articles by politicians/celebrities will be for sale, and labeled as such. I’m not sure why a newspaper like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal or New York Times would want to foul their editorial pages with such drivel, but a buck’s a buck. This is modern “journalism” and it’s getting worse not at annual pace, but monthly.
As always, life imitates Monty Python: “The BBC wishes to deny rumors that it is going into liquidation. Mrs. Kelly, who owns the flat where they live, has said that they can stay on till the end of the month, and we’ve just heard that Huw Weldon’s watch has been accepted by the London Electricity Board and transmissions for this evening can be continued as planned.”
KURT SCHLICHTER: Stop the Third Party Insanity. “Ditching the GOP is a bad idea born of justifiable frustration, and we need to stop being emotional and start being ruthless in our campaign to retake this country from these liberal establishment aspiring fascists. A third party is not the way. It is a bad idea, one that is technically impractical and which is strategically inept. It will lead to disaster. And the Democrats know it, which is why they love this third party palaver. The only thing that makes the tooting likes of Eric Swalwell coo in delight harder than some mediocre Chi Com honeypot is the thought of us conservatives committing ritual suicide by splitting our half of the country in two because some of the 50 percent of Americans in our camp are insufferable sissies.”
UNEXPECTEDLY: The ‘QAnon Shaman’ Just Flipped on Trump.
Related: “Jake Angeli, shamanic practitioner, leads the crowd in a yell before the march in solidarity with climate activism groups across the country to the Arizona State Capitol Building Friday, September 20, 2019.”
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: White House Punts on Condemning BDS Movement.
IT’S SATIRE – FOR NOW: Blue Check Homes. “Get a Verified Blue Badge on your home. The blue verified badge on your house lets people outside know that you’re an authentic public figure. To receive the blue check crest, there must be someone authentic and notable actively living in the house.”
THE CRUSHING OF DISSENT WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES: Colleges investigate community members for attending pro-Trump protest.
SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB: As Tom Brady Reaches His 10th Super Bowl, Does Inequality Still Bother You?
CAN’T STOP THE SIGNAL: Defiant Redditors buy Times Square billboard as GameStop stock saga rages.
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