BILLION-DOLLAR LULZ: How a Bunch of Redditors with $600 Stimulus Checks Outsmarted Wall Street Hedge-Fund Managers.
MICHAEL BARONE: Biden’s United States of Racial Quotas and Preferences.
THE CHIEF JUSTICE PRESIDES WHEN YOU’RE IMPEACHING A PRESIDENT. YOU’RE NOT IMPEACHING A PRESIDENT, BUT A PRIVATE CITIZEN, WHICH IS ILLEGAL. Senate Dems Wonder: Say, Where Is John Roberts In This Impeachment Trial, Anyway?
Plus: Trump Poll Shows Impeachment Backlash Hitting Cheney.
Endorsing an unfounded and unconstitutional political impeachment is a bad look.
RETURN TO NORMALCY? Biden sparks new immigration surge, many with coronavirus.
Meanwhile he’s adding coronavirus travel restrictions on non-illegals coming to America.
LARRY ELDER: Democrats Want a ‘Return to Civility’; When Did They Practice It?
Larry has the receipts — read the whole thing.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Sycophant Press Can’t Cover for Biden’s Opening Train Wreck. “We’re soon going to need NASA computers to track the number of executive orders issuing forth from the puppet president. It’s no big secret that conservative folks like me aren’t thrilled with any of them. It would seem, however, that Biden may be doing some bipartisan stepping on of the toes.”
MEGYN KELLY: Trump Supporter? “Megyn Kelly came to The Donald’s defense on Saturday in an interview on BBC. She said the media’s hatred of President Trump bears some responsibility for the storming of the Capitol, in which the congressional police force shot and killed an unarmed protester. She told BBC that she has come around on how Donald Trump and his supporters view the media.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The GameStop Squeeze Will End Badly. “Even with all this money sloshing around from the Fed, and the way it is propping up Boomer retirement accounts — it really feels like a silly season just before a correction. But what do I know?”
MY WEEK BACKING GAMESTOP ON THE STONKS MARKET:
The next day I went straight back in, and since then, the price has quadrupled. It just keeps going up, fueled by hype and the Redditors’ refusal to sell. Yesterday Elon Musk tweeted his support, throwing a lot more fuel on the fire. Already one hedge fund has thrown in the towel, nursing a huge loss. The whole trend has now spread to other stocks which have been shorted.
On WallStreetBets, talk is turning to exit strategies. At some point, they are going to cash in, and when they do, the whole thing will come crashing down. Given the huge gains, it’s amazing none of them have done it already. It makes you wonder: is this really just about greed? Maybe it’s more about the lolz.
And don’t you dare LOL over this story, shouts the Dow Jones-owned MarketWatch: Opinion: Stop laughing about GameStop’s stock mania — no, really.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): CNBC Guest SCORCHES Anchor for Siding With Wall Street Over the Little Guy in Epic Clash Over GameStop’s Meteoric Rise.
GOOD: Intel’s Incoming CEO Gelsinger Lures Back Engineering Talent.
Sunil Shenoy will rejoin Intel as senior vice president of the Design Engineering group effective Feb. 1, the Santa Clara, California-based company said in a statement Wednesday. When he left in 2014, Shenoy was head of Intel’s platform engineering group, a narrower role to the one he’s assuming now.
Glenn Hinton, a former Intel Senior Fellow who led the development of a key chip design, also returned to the company recently in a senior engineering role. Shenoy and Hinton will report to outgoing CEO Bob Swan until the middle of February, and then to Gelsinger who officially rejoins Intel on Feb. 15.
Gelsinger, who previously spent 30 years at Intel, said he’s bringing back the style of management he learned from the founders, notably Andy Grove. Before Swan, Intel had always been run by home-grown executives who were adherents to Grove’s data-driven decision making and direct, sometimes confrontational, internal communication aimed at ensuring problems were never buried.
Intel’s fabrication prowess was half of its secret sauce, but in the last few years the company’s fabs have fallen a generation or more behind Taiwan Semi.
While it’s nice that TSMC is building a new fab in Arizona, for competitive and national security reasons it’s vital that Intel get its mojo back.
And if that sounds paranoid, well… only the paranoid survive.
REALLY, MITT? REALLY? “You know what, I was a big Trump supporter, I was really pulling for Donald Trump, but he lost fair and square.”
Plus: “I’m not seeing the whole transcript, but to really lean into the demonstration of honesty, Romney should acknowledge the dismissals that were for a lack of standing. I’d like to see him engage with what Rand Paul said last Sunday. . . I agree that the time for contesting the election has passed, but I don’t think the way Romney is speaking will convince Trump supporters to give up their belief that something went wrong. Telling them the courts found it laughable, and they should give up and move on is going to make true believers more suspicious. And I’m sure they don’t buy the assertion that Romney was ever ‘a big Trump supporter.'”
Well, that’s because it’s laughably false.
ENTERING THE BOX CANYON: Democratic Senators Recognizing Impeachment Is a Fairy Tale Seek Other Options.
And from Roger Kimball: Impeachment 2.0 is another silly sham.
BURSTING THE MEDIA’S BUBBLE:
D*MN IT BEE! Political Violence and the Second Amendment.
THERE IS THE REASON WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS: Political Violence and the Second Amendment.
It ain’t just for the hunting.
IT’S ALSO WRONG FOR THE LEFT TO ATTEMPT TO BE HITLER: Yes, It Is Wrong To Compare Trump To Hitler.
LSD. OR MAYBE METH: Fauci Says Two Masks, CNBC Says Why Not More?
You guys have a better explanation?
SOAP? PEOOPLE ARE BUYING HIS SOAP??? How Winston Churchill became an accidental beauty influencer.
Couldn’t they borrow some of his courage and principles instead?
UNFORTUNATELY, WE CANNOT RETURN THE NEW ADMINISTRATION: I regret the dumb stuff I bought during the pandemic.
Which is too bad because a) it’s provably illegally installed. b) it arrived broken. c) has a good chance of killing you and everything you love.
GEE, IF ONLY WE HAD A WALL OR SOMETHING: FDA issues alert on hand sanitizer products from Mexico.
IF THEY AREN’T CAREFUL THERE WILL BE NOBODY LEFT TO TESTIFY: DC officer Jeffrey Smith commits suicide following Capitol riot.
THIS WAS WRITTEN BY SOMEONE WHO REALLY CAN’T DE-CLOAK: Dare to Be Petty.
CANCELLING GIANTS: Today’s blacklisted Americans: Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.
It makes the leftist pygmies think of themselves as being of towering stature.
ON THE WHOLE GAMESTOP THING: Why Hedge Funds Are Not the Good Guys, Why Redditards Are An Ally in this Particular Fight, and How MSM is Lying to Us .
THE LEFT ALWAYS ACCUSES US OF WHAT THEY DO: Canceling The Keystone Pipeline And Reducing U.S. Arms Are Biden’s First Two Major Gifts To Russia.
BECAUSE BAI DEN ZHOU IS WHOLLY OWNED BY CHINA: Press Secretary Dodges on Why Biden Revoked Rule Protecting U.S. Power Grid From China.
SEND BACK PROGRESSIVES: The United States Should Give Hong Kongers And Uighurs A Ticket To Freedom.
Send them back in exchange, head per head. Our progressives want us to be China, problem solved. And Hong Kongers and Uighurs get to be free, problem solved. We win, they lose.
WE’VE KNOWN FOR SOMETIME THAT ANTE-FA IS WHAT COMES BEFORE FASCISTS: The Left Keeps Accusing Conservatives of “The Big Lie” – A Term Invented by Hitler As He Prepared to Persecute German Jews.
And I’ll keep believing my lying eyes, thank you so much.
I HOPE THE TIGER EATS THEM: Dismounting the COVID Tiger.
January 27, 2021
WELL: WHO advisor: COVID-19 pandemic likely started via lab leak: Calls wet market origin story a lie.
A knowledgeable friend on Facebook comments: “This pandemic is not going to be over until People’s Liberation Army officer and bioweapons engineer Zhengli Shi, the DIRECTOR OF DISEASE ENGINEERING at Wuhan Institute of Virology is arrested, tried and executed for crimes against humanity and all of her variants are put into an industrial furnace and burned and the Wuhan Institute of Virology is completely razed and covered over with a concrete dome.”
So, never then.
CRUSH THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Nasdaq CEO Friedman says the exchange will halt trading in a stock if they link unusual activity to social media chatter.
They really do make it easy to see what they’re afraid of.
Plus, from a friend: “Can we call the GameStop thing what it actually is? A Capital Insurrection.” Heh.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Biden All-Female Communications Team Won’t Tell Nation What’s Wrong, Nation Should Already Know.
NOW THEY TELL US: Hydroxychloroquine may have some use to treat COVID after all, NJ study shows. I took it when I had Covid and my case was mild, for whatever that’s worth.
USUALLY IT’S CONSIDERED BAD FOR AUTHORITIES TO LEAK THE NAME OF AN INFORMANT: Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was an FBI informant.
But let’s be clear: We’re told that the Proud Boys are a white supremacist group. Now we’re also told that they were led by a black, hispanic guy who was actually a government agent?
AID AND COMFORT TO IRAN: Biden Freezes U.S. Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia, UAE. Also, I guess he’s afraid they’ve gotten too friendly to Israel and must be punished.
I HAD TO LEAVE. THEY WERE HAVING FUN WRONG. Opinion: Stop laughing about GameStop’s stock mania — no, really.
(Classical reference in headline.)
JOHN KERRY, REPORTING FOR DOODY: John Kerry’s family still owns private jet as he leads climate fight, FAA records indicate.
OCEANIA NEWSWEEK HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH TOM COTTON: An Ever-Changing Past.
IT WILL CONTINUE UNTIL ONLY THE IDEAS OF THOSE IN POWER CAN BE SPOKEN: Now the supporters of cancel culture are being cancelled. “Some of the left-wing architects and cheerleaders of contemporary censorship, including Britain’s Socialist Workers Party, which has backed the No Platform policy for decades, are now being No Platformed themselves. ‘This is a disgrace!’, they cry, which would be funny if censorship were not so serious. These people helped to build the infrastructure of modern censorship, with its determination to crush ‘hate speech’ and ‘offensive’ views, and now they’re shocked to find themselves falling victim to it? Have they not read any history books at all?”
No. No, they haven’t.
YOU CAN’T TRUST TECH PEOPLE: “Discord did us dirty and I am not impressed with them destroying our community.”
CHANGE: Space Force officially ends launch partnerships with Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman. “The plan from day one was to discontinue the LSAs with companies that did not win a National Security Space Launch procurement contract. Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman lost to ULA and SpaceX, which were selected in August 2020.”
JEFF DUNETZ: On Holocaust Remembrance Day: Silence About Antisemitism Allowing People To Forget.
Exit quote: “It’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. I would say, have a little decency, but our media is full of morally bankrupt individuals. Hence, how headlines like this take shape.“
SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB: How GameStop, Bernie Madoff, and Dave Portnoy Have Mets Fans Panicked.
I WAS ASSURED IT WAS HARMLESS BY ALL THE BEST PEOPLE: Long-term study reveals harm in regular cannabis use.
EUGENE VOLOKH: May N.Y. Businesses Fire Employees for Using Parler and Gab?
JIM TREACHER: When Will Biden Apologize for Accusing the Capitol Police of Racism?
The Capitol riot was a complete outrage, and I fully support holding to account every single person who played a role in it. That includes convicting Donald Trump in the Senate for inciting that riot, although it’ll never happen because the Republicans don’t have the spine for it. They want everyone to just forget it ever happened, just like every other criminal wants everyone to forget about their crimes. They’re only looking out for their own miserable hides, and they don’t care about the cops who paid the price in blood.
But that doesn’t mean President Biden should get away with smearing the very Capitol Police who kept that riot from becoming an even bigger disaster. They kept an angry mob from killing the vice president of the United States, after his own boss called him out in front of that mob. Those officers put their bodies on the line to defend the ideals that have held this country together for hundreds of years. It’s absolutely shameful to smear them as racists, and if Biden had any brains left in that shrunken apple on top of his shoulders, he’d apologize to them.
Read the whole thing.
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Jen Psaki On GameStop Stock Surge: ‘We Have The First Female Treasury Secretary.’
At her daily White House press conference Wednesday afternoon, Psaki responded to questions over whether the administration might get involved in the ongoing stock surge by noting that they’d just hired Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary.
“Is the White House concerned about the stock market activity we’re seeing around GameStop and now some other stocks as well?” one reporter asked Psaki. “Have there been any conversations with the SEC about how to proceed?”
“Well, I’m also happy to repeat that we have the first female Treasury secretary and a team that’s surrounding her and often questions about markets,” Psaki replied.
She continued by noting that the White House would send reporters to the Treasury for comment, “but our team is, of course, our economic team, including Secretary Yellen and others, are monitoring the situation.”
When asked about the steep stock Dow decline, Psaki responded with a confusing excuse.
“It is a good reminder that the stock market is not the only measure of the health of our economy,” she said, “and it does not reflect how working and middle-class families are doing.”
The GameStop stock surge, of course, appears to be built on the day-to-day financial dealings of non-professional traders.
Psaki will no doubt “circle back” to GameStop at a later press conference.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. GameStop rally is warning that market bubbles have gone mad.
GameStop is a video game retailer that has been priced at about $3 to $10 a share for much of the year. But in the past few days, individual investors have driven the share price above $300.
Many of these buyers are using Robinhood, an app that lets anyone trade stocks without a commission. Because of the pandemic, people have plenty of time on their hands, and are looking to make cash, and it’s fueled a spectacular rise in individual day trading.
Why are they buying GameStop? Well, some of the commentators on “WallStreetBets,” the Reddit message board driving the frenzy, believe it’s a good company.
But mostly they’re out to hurt the big guys.
Hedge funds love shorting stocks, a trading technique where you make money when stock prices go down. Companies often go belly up amid short selling “bear raids.” That’s why small investors hate hedge funds so much.
When word spread among Robinhood traders that GameStop was heavily shorted by the big guys, the tables were turned into a bull raid. They drove up the price, and all those bets that GameStop would decline in value failed. A “short squeeze” was on at a level sophisticated market players hadn’t seen in years.
At least one big hedge fund, Melvin Capital, needed a bailout as prices of GameStop spiked a gazillion percent in a matter of days. My trading sources say there will likely be other big players seeking money to stay alive.
Delicious, right? For those who think — not unwarrantedly — that the market is rigged against them, the Robinhood revolt is a wonderful bit of schadenfreude.
But nothing has changed about GameStop’s business. It’s still primarily a brick-and-mortar retailer in an electronic world. It’s certainly not worth $300 a share. So while Robinhood buyers who got in early made a good bit of money — at least on paper — the bubble will eventually burst, and the shares will likely fall back to earth again.
The problem is that GameStop isn’t the only stock this is happening to. Blackberry, makers of the handheld device you no longer use, and AMC, owners of movie theaters you no longer go to, are also looking like Apple on steroids.
Iowahawk has seen the future, and knows how this will end:
Old and busted: partying like it’s 1999.
The new hotness? Partying like it’s 1985!
Related: Discord bans the r/WallStreetBets server.
Glad to see that blue checks are getting their takes on Wall Street from the latest season of Babylon Berlin.
Earlier: The Gamestop ($GME) Saga.
BILL KRISTOL is just pathetic now.
I DON’T SEE DRIVE-THROUGH TESTING USING THIS APPROACH: COVID Anal Swabs for Beijing Residents More Accurate, Says Chinese Expert.
THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS AN OBJECTION TO GOVERNMENTAL AUTHORITY: Biden DHS Issues Domestic Terror Alert Warning of ‘Objections’ to ‘Governmental Authority.’
CHURCHILL SMILES: Afternoon nap could boost mental agility, study says.
FAVORITES OF THE RULING CLASS: FAT CRIMINALS? Howie Carr: Fat chance! Obese cons in line for early release in new bill.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Study: Children who use touchscreens more easily distracted than peers.
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Move over granny; press, politicians jump vaccine line.
My folks have gone without the greatest joy of their lives, time with family. And the caretakers they need to come to their home have been severely limited. If family shouldn’t visit them then certainly strangers shouldn’t. Their quality of life has suffered.
As I write this neither of my parents have been able to get a COVID vaccine. And not for lack for constantly trying.
My son who has Down syndrome and an underlying heart condition — he required open heart surgery at 3 weeks old — hasn’t received a vaccine.
So, who has had access to a vaccine? Our state legislators. Yep. State legislators can jump in front of the most vulnerable people in the state including the elderly and handicapped.
So much for a “citizen” legislature. All people are equal. But some are more equal than others.
Read the whole thing.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 6 Great Home Defense Shotguns for Less.
NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES: Chick-fil-A Saves the Day, Fixes City’s Vaccination Snafu.
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): California prof: Heterosexuality is ‘tragic.’
I was tempted to lead with “MAYBE THE WAY YOU DO IT, HON.”
SCIENCE MARCHES ON: Intercontinental study sheds light on the microbial life of sourdough.
THAT’S BECAUSE THEY ARE: Veteran Film Scribe Fears Dems Are Crushing Free Speech. “Sasha Stone cheers ‘Run Hide Fight,’ says political press can’t tell the truth.”
Good stuff from Christian Toto.
DOMINIC GREEN ON OLIGARCHY IN AMERICA:
The American oligarchy is capitalism with American characteristics: always friendly, strategically diverse and gender-neutral, obsessed with race and blind to class, sentimental about Nature and enraptured by technology, and, above all, belligerently optimistic that it is honoring the unique promise of America. Until, that is, you get on the wrong side of it.
Read the whole thing.
GOOD NEWS FOR ASIAN ELEPHANTS: Humans have an obesity problem, Asian elephants don’t.
ROGER SIMON: Can Rand Paul Save the Senate?
Every day in every way I like Rand Paul better. He gives libertarianism a good name by standing for something, unlike almost all his colleagues, right and left.
Just the other day he stood up to the tedious hyper-partisanship of ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
Tuesday he weighed in, to great effect, on the impeachment issue, although I suspect it wasn’t just his impassioned and eloquent speech, a point of order actually, that swung 45 Republican senators to his side.
The Kentucky senator pointed out the obvious, calling the Democrats’ second impeachment charade utterly unconstitutional and forcing the one hundred lawmakers to stand up and be counted on the question.
The result was 45 out of 50 Republican senators—whether reluctantly or not we will never know—agreed with him, making the coming trial moot (the two-thirds necessary for conviction nearly impossible) and most likely an embarrassment to the politically bloodthirsty Democrats and their addled president who keeps telling us he wants to bring us together.
But, as I mentioned, something else was going on.
As important, possibly more, was the new poll Rasmussen took for John Solomon’s Just the News of an imaginary 2024 presidential election. It’s ridiculously early, of course, but it showed Donald Trump’s as yet nonexistent Patriot party garnering 23 percent of the vote to the Republicans 17 percent. (The Democrats were at 46% with “other”—whatever that is— winning 14 percent, barely trailing the Republicans.)
This wasn’t really surprising—not to me and probably not to most of you—but it apparently was to a group of seemingly-clueless Republican senators who only a few days ago registered the possibility that they might vote to convict a president of their own party who was not even still in office.
The poll must have scared the proverbial bejesus out of them. Anyway it should have.
So we won’t forget the original Republican reprobates, they were, according to a Jan. 25, 2021 report here at The Epoch Times:
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.)
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah)
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.)
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio)
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska)
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.)
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.)
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho)
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.)
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.)
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.)
How quickly things change. After Tuesday’s vote, sixteen were reduced to five in a flash!
Only Collins and Murkowski (perpetual outsiders), Toomey (not running for reelection), Sasse (looking for QAnon under every rock) and, of course, Romney remain. Call them The Five (not to be confused with Greg Gutfeld et. al.).
We needn’t belabor that only a day or so ago newly-ensconced minority leader McConnell was touting the inevitability of a trial he just voted against as unconstitutional. How embarrassing.
Another list exists at the same Epoch Times article of those whose leanings we did not know, at least yesterday. Today, of course, we can assume that are all squarely in Trump’s camp.
Whether it was Rand Paul or Rasmussen that finally woke those people up is ultimately irrelevant.
What is relevant is how few of them stood up for Donald Trump during what we might call “crunch time,” when he needed them to support Sens. Hawley and Cruz in their attempt to get a measly ten-day period with which to study the allegations of election fraud to see if they amounted to anything.
As Ed Morrissey wrote yesterday, Rand Paul can’t derail the Senate trial, but he “can take all of the suspense out of it” – and did just that.
MUST NOT BUT STILL MIGHT: Biden must not remove Huawei from the entities list.
Nominated by President Biden to serve as commerce secretary, Raimondo was asked by Sen. Ted Cruz whether she would commit to keeping Huawei on the so-called entities list. That trade blacklist bans U.S. commercial dealings with those on it. Huawei was added to the list under the Trump administration. Unfortunately, Raimondo pledged only to consult with Cruz and the Senate on the question of Huawei’s future status.
Raimondo might be acting under explicit instructions from the White House not to offer any China commitments, but the former Rhode Island governor’s response is ridiculous regardless. Huawei’s status should have been an easy answer for the Biden administration.
Not good.
HMM: Mouse study: Gabapentin prevents harmful structural changes in spinal cord. “Research led by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine found that the widely prescribed pain-relief drug gabapentin can prevent harmful structural changes in the injured spinal cords of mice, and also block cardiovascular changes and immune suppression caused by spinal cord injury.”
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Nancy Pelosi: Inside Trader. “If you wonder which businesses Democrats intend to favor, one easy answer is to look at what companies Nancy Pelosi is investing in.”
“THIS JUST IN:” Woman goes viral after appearing on TV with dildo behind her.
FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: New Research Debunks Claim That a $15 Minimum Wage Would Not Reduce Employment.
FOLLOW THE SCIENCE. DON’T YOU BELIEVE IN SCIENCE? CDC: COVID-19 spread in schools much lower than in rest of community.
THEY’LL HAVE HIM DO A BUNCH OF UNPOPULAR STUFF, THEN REPLACE HIM WITH KAMALA: Biden Becoming Less Popular With Likely Voters Every Day—and So Are His Policies. “Biden’s first Daily Presidential Tracking Poll put him into negative approval territory at -2. It has gotten worse. On Monday, he dropped to -4. Tuesday, he moved down again to -5. This trend is quite a feat. President Trump started at +2 and rose to +13 in the first days of his presidency.”
In his last daily tracking poll, Trump was at +3.
TYLENOL’S FINE, BUT NSAIDS ARE NOT: Avoid preventive pain relievers before getting a COVID vaccine. “The side effects from the vaccines are caused by activation of the immune system, meaning that the immune system is working and starting to build immunity to COVID-19 — this is what we want. These pain relievers are anti-inflammatory medications. They prevent parts of the immune system from working and slow down the immune response.”
This may — it’s speculation, not research at this point — reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine by blunting the immune response.
POINTS AND FIGURES: The GameStop ($GME) Saga.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: China Virus, China Virus, China Virus.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: When is a virus from China not a China virus?
Answer: When CCP Joe tells you so, prole.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- It turns out 1984 was an instruction manual after all
- Florida teachers party on the beach while teachers union fights re-opening
- BBC gueat reveals way too much on air
Bonus Sanity: Big Tech (finally) comes out in favor of decoupling.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
NEW YORK TIMES WRITER ARRESTED AS SECRET IRAN AGENT ACKNOWLEDGES HE WAS PAID BY IRANIAN GOVERNMENT.
A New York Times spokesperson did not respond to a query about whether the newspaper, which according to a search on its website Monday morning had not yet covered the federal criminal complaint against [Kaveh] Afrasiabi, plans to tell its readers about the situation. The spokesperson also did not respond to a question about whether the newspaper plans to publish an editor’s note indicating that the opinion pieces came from someone who was getting paid by the Iranian government.
Afrasiabi said the payments from the Iranian government — about $265,000 since 2007, plus health insurance coverage, federal prosecutors alleged — had not swayed his writing. “At no point in my professional career, I have been moved by anything other than my rather puritanical moral responsibility as an intellectual,” he said.
No word yet if Afrasiabi serves as a guide for one of the Gray Lady’s favorite tourist destinations.
JAMES LILEKS ON CLAIRE BERLINSKI VERSUS TED CRUZ:
Context: Cruz slammed the POTUS for rejoining the Paris Peace accords, said he cared more about the people of Paris than Pittsburgh.
* * * * * * * *
She’s right about Paris being the seat of arts and culture Paris is beautiful, but its beauty is an artifact of its past.
I know Paris has it all over most American cities in terms of beauty and urban wonderment, if you’re into centralized homogeneity or order — and I am, when it works as well as Haussmann’s Paris, but no one could ever do it again. The old standards of humane beauty and grace were tossed over for the usual post-war anti-human monstrosities, and this extended to all the other arts as well. So you have a culture incapable of creating a certain kind of beauty pronouncing themselves more enlightened because they have come up with some that fails to equal it on every possible level.
Read the whole thing.
JOANNE JACOBS: Why Johnny can’t read any more. “For parents who rely on public schools to teach reading, the Covid lockdown has been a ‘wrecking ball,’ writes Carr. ‘Most children with severe reading difficulties need individual or small-group instruction to improve.’ Few parents have the specialized training to teach dyslexic children at home.”
THIS SAYS IT ALL: Biden’s Top Scientist is a Sociologist Specializing in “Social Inequality.” But on the other hand, a “historian of race and health” is quoted as calling it “an inspired choice.”
THE CAMPAIGN TO STAMP OUT ACADEMIC HERESY. These anti-intellectual campaigns are killing research. (So much for “science!”) Of course, as Glenn’s post below about Tom Cotton and Newsweek demonstrates, history’s on the block too.
ARE YOU NOW, OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A MEMBER OF PARLER? Agent Fired from Literary Agency for Using Parler and Gab.
The president of a literary agency based in New York City said Monday on Twitter that one of the agency’s employees was terminated after her use of conservative social media sites Parler and Gab was discovered.
Colleen Oefelein, who identified herself on Twitter as an associate literary agent with the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency, appeared to confirm her termination in a tweet on Monday morning.
“Well thanks Twitter and @JDLitAgency,” Oefelein wrote. “I just got fired because I’m a Christian and a conservative.”
Why, it’s as if 50 years of Hollywood blacklist movies were all suddenly made obsolete: “For decades, Hollywood and the media were obsessed to the point of self-obsession with ensuring this could never happen again, that Americans could never again have their free speech rights destroyed by private companies. Well, what a difference a few years makes. If you take even a cursory look around, you will now find Hollywood and the national media making arguments in defense of the 1950s Hollywood blacklist.”
BYRON YORK: The Revolution Devours All Before It.
The latest enactment of that old truth happened Tuesday night in, of all places, a Zoom meeting of the San Francisco School Board. In that meeting, members voted to strip the names of American historical figures — George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and even California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein — from schools in San Francisco.
What began in recent years as a call to remove the names of Confederate leaders from schools, roads, and military bases, and then to tear down Confederate statues, has now moved on to target all of American history.
* * * * * * * *
Of course they would not stop with Confederate generals. Of course they would not stop with George Washington. And they won’t stop with a liberal Democrat like Dianne Feinstein, of all people. The revolution continues to devour all before it.
Power up your two-way telescreen, enjoy the benefits of the new chocolate ration, and read the whole thing, comrade.
GREAT MOMENTS IN PROJECTION: MSNBC Goes Full Nazi in New Ad: It’s Like These Conservatives ‘Just Following Orders.’
MSNBC went full Nazi in a new ad, bizarrely linking conservatives Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy to the Third Reich. The spot promoting host Lawrence O’Donnell began with text reading, “Straight to the heart of moral corruption.”
Then, the liberal host lectured, “’We were just following orders’ is a statement that is indelibly etched in our consciences as what we should never become. We are following orders is now and always has been the last line of defense for the indefensible here and around the world.” During his commentary, pictures of Iran-Contra figure North, as well as Watergate’s Liddy appeared on-screen. That shifted to images of actual Nazis during the Nuremberg trials.
Just imagine if Fox News ran a spot comparing Stalin-era communists to Democratic operatives or politicians. What, exactly, to Liddy and North have to do with the actual Nazis? That these two were following orders connected to their respective scandals makes them like… Nuremberg trial Nazis? And what does any of this have to do with 2021 Republicans?
It’s all pretty rich coming from a network that believes your children are not your own, has a weekly show hosted by a legendary anti-Semite, and has another host who famously said:
“I am not a progressive. I am not a liberal who is so afraid of the word that I had to change my name to progressive. Liberals amuse me. I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals, okay.”
— Lawrence O’Donnell, November 5th, 2010.
TURNABOUT: Introducing the Biden COVID Death Tracker.
HEY, DID YOU NOTICE: How the Blue State Covid lockdowns are killing jobs and spirits, but not the virus? Issues & Insights noticed.
UNITY: 200 Republicans Pledge Support for Hyde Amendment as Biden Takes Aim at Pro-Life Legislation.
The Hyde Amendment used to be one of the few things pro-life and pro-choice congress critters could agree on, before the Democrats fully radicalized on abortion.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Colleges closed many campus services during pandemic…but still charged students for them. “Now, colleges are being slammed with a new wave of lawsuits.” Make them pay.
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