YES. BUT IS THERE A REASON TO CARE WHAT THEY THINK? GIVE THEM A M.A.I.D. REFERRAL CARD: Canadian Leaders Not Too Happy After Trump Posts Map Showing Country as Part of U.S..
It’s what they do to everyone else.
YES. BUT IS THERE A REASON TO CARE WHAT THEY THINK? GIVE THEM A M.A.I.D. REFERRAL CARD: Canadian Leaders Not Too Happy After Trump Posts Map Showing Country as Part of U.S..
It’s what they do to everyone else.
YES, BUT THEY’RE DESPERATELY TRYING TO BLAME TRUMP. SOMEHOW: Palisades Fire Incinerates Future Career of Mayor Karen Bass, Gavin Newsom’s Presidential Aspirations.
GREAT MOMENTS IN DEMOCRATIC ORATORY:
Mayor Karen Bass stands in a stunned silence for nearly 2 minutes as a reporter asks her if she regrets cutting Los Angeles' Fire Department budget by nearly $20 million and being absent as her citizens' homes burned down.pic.twitter.com/64A1hlTv2m
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 8, 2025
This is Politics 101 stuff — “It’s too early to play the blame game; my heart goes out to the people impacted by the fire. When I get back to California, I will lead a full inquiry into both the cause of the fire and any shortcomings in the response to it.” Why is she clamming up?
UPDATE: Ron Burgundy, call your office!
Mayor Karen Bass literally just read the words "URL" off her script during the press conference instead of the emergency website for the victims of the fire.
I think we have a new winner for most incompetent politician in America. pic.twitter.com/KIQfIVCWZB
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 9, 2025
MORE: Joe Biden narrows down his VP list, with Karen Bass emerging as one of several key contenders.
—CNN, July 31st, 2020.
OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.
TOMORROW’S PARDONS TODAY! Biden weighs preemptive pardons for Cheney, Fauci, other Trump foes.
President Biden is flirting with handing out preemptive pardons to some of President-elect Donald Trump’s favorite political targets.
In an interview with USA Today, Mr. Biden said he might hand out the get-out-of-jail-free cards to, among others, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Mr. Biden said he urged Mr. Trump when he met with him in November to put his beef with Ms. Cheney, who voted to impeach him and co-chaired the Jan. 6 special committee, and others behind him.
“I tried to make clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive for his interest to go back and try to settle scores,” Mr. Biden said.
That’s pretty rich, considering Biden’s four years in office seemed to consistent primarily about settling scores against Trump. Speaking of which, here’s how the print edition of USA Today summed up the (p)resident’s term:
THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: Is This the ‘Anti-Social Century?’
No need to go to a movie theater if you can rent first-run movies a few weeks after they’re in the theaters. Why sit in a restaurant and wait for bad service when you can pick up your food and take it home to eat at your leisure?
“Men who watch television now spend seven hours in front of the TV for every hour they spend hanging out with somebody outside their home,” writes Thompson. American females spend more time engaged with their pets than they do with friends.
Perhaps one of the problems is that we judge our self-imposed solitude based on a comparison to the first half of the 20th century. From 1900 to 1960, membership in churches and labor unions surged, there were more marriages than ever, and the biggest baby boom in history took place.
All kinds of gathering places were built: theaters, museums, concert halls, and playgrounds. But then something happened that gave us an excuse to withdraw. “From 1985 to 1994, active involvement in community organizations fell by nearly half,” reports Thompson.
What happened in the 1970s? Klinenberg, the sociologist, notes a shift in political priorities: The government dramatically slowed its construction of public spaces. “Places that used to anchor community life, like libraries and school gyms and union halls, have become less accessible or shuttered altogether,” he told me. Putnam points, among other things, to new moral values, such as the embrace of unbridled individualism. But he found that two of the most important factors were by then ubiquitous technologies: the automobile and the television set.
The construction of highways and interstates enabled the growth of the suburbs. The exodus was spurred by rising crime and racial tensions in the urban areas. As people moved farther away from each other, their only connection to reality became the television set.
Later, through smartphones and the internet, our children may have connected to others but not on the vital person-to-person level that leads to a healthy, adult psyche.
Jonathan Haidt is having some success weening kids off smartphones, but how will AI change life for young people in the 21st century? Can AI Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide?
(Rick Moran’s article is just for our VIP members; please use the discount code LOYALTY if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.)
LAUGHING WOLF: A Resignation.
My mother was always into family, which is to say the actions of ancestors in the past who gave some cachet to those still living. She actually became a rather well respected genealogist for her work to establish legal proofs on various lines. For her, every link to royalty and nobility was yet more proof of our goodness and superiority. Me, well, I rather enjoyed the playboys, cattle thieves, and other less-than-stellar ancestors. I’ve met various members of royalty over the years, and frankly with a few exceptions I’d rather drink with whores and rogues. The latter are far better sorts in my opinion.
That said, I also have to admit I enjoyed being a direct descendant of Duncan slain by the traitor MacBeth. Of course, I am one of many who suspect the family paid off Shakespeare to make Duncan into a saint when he was far from it. It was interesting to have more than one connection to the current royal family of England. And, I have enjoyed being a member of a society The Friends of St. George’s. Another earned it, but it was interesting to be a descendant of one who had done great things.
However, current events do have an impact on the past.
Read the whole thing.
MAPS: See how large the California wildfires are. The Palisades Fire is already larger than the land size of Providence, Rhode Island.
Meanwhile, these images look far more like Dresden in 1945, than L.A. in 2025:
Drone shot over the Palisades from @KitKarzen pic.twitter.com/S0DO6pdgHe
— Los Angeles Scanner (@LosAngeles_Scan) January 9, 2025
A friend in LA just took this video pic.twitter.com/WJBWCHmCUs
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 8, 2025
THE MOST UNDER-REPORTED STORY OF THE BIDEN PRESIDENCY:
In the last week or so, there has been a sudden burst of recognition of the extent to which Democrats and the media worked together to cover up Biden’s progressing cognitive decline. One media figure after another has come forward to call this the “most under-reported” story of the last year or several years. Some examples among many include: CBS correspondent Jan Crawford on December 30 (“That [the most under-reported story] would be, to me, Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline that became undeniable in a televised debate”); Rolling Stone, December 30 (“Matt Yglesias, Josh Barro, and Mehdi Hasan regret failing to acknowledge Biden’s cognitive decline sooner — and its impact on the 2024 election.”); MSN, January 4 (“Media facing backlash for reporting on Biden’s cognitive decline.”)
I agree that this was a very big and very under-reported story during the Biden presidency. But was it the biggest? Not to me. The biggest under-reported story of the Biden presidency was the President’s corruption.
The big difference between these two stories is that the cognitive decline story was much more difficult to cover up. Despite the best efforts of Biden’s staff to limit his appearances, restrict difficult questioning, and prevent all deviations from script, the President was still regularly out in the public eye. Even as every powerful Democrat insisted that Biden was “sharp as a tack,” we could all see him uttering confused answers to questions, mixing up his location, stumbling and falling, shaking hands with the air, and so forth. The refusal to take a simple cognitive test was a persistent tell. Yes, the left-wing media should be ashamed of their reporting; but they were not really able to fool anyone who was paying attention.
The corruption story was different. It takes some knowledge of the facts and the law to understand whether there is anything to an allegation of bribery. The mainstream media simply refused to provide the chronology of facts or a summary of the law to assist readers to understand the circumstances. As just a few examples:
As Karol Markowicz recently tweeted:
SOMETMES YOU WIN: JewHateDatabase Deletes Post on Falsely Accused Boca Professor: “I am innocent”.
I linked Toni’s earlier post on this. She tells me the earlier story got results.
MAJOR JACK D. RIPPER TO THE WHITE COURTESY PHONE: Levels of fluoride higher than in drinking water may be linked to lower IQs.
POLITICO: REPUBLICANS SEIZE! Trump, Musk unleash on California Democrats over wildfires.
Republicans are seizing on the catastrophic wildfires that tore through the Los Angeles area early Wednesday, blaming Democratic policies for the deadly, wind-fueled conflagrations that forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
President-elect Donald Trump lashed out at Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, calling the fires “virtually apocalyptic” in a Truth Social post and pointing a finger at state rules protecting endangered species for limiting the amount of water that gets sent south from Northern California.
“I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He is the blame for this.”
Well, yes:
Just 11 months ago, LA had the most rainfall in the past 25 years, and several extra feet of snowpack in the Sierras. Since CA is too busy destroying dams to build new reservoirs, the majority of that precipitation drained into the ocean. Newsom's Democrats own this. https://t.co/yxIYaNcE0x
— Jon Gabriel (@exjon) January 8, 2025
Mister, California could use a man William Mulholland again.
BOB GRABOYES: Manifest Destiny 2025Quick takes on Donald Trump’s four hemispheric ambitions. Making Canada a state — the least serious of these — is a bad idea, I agree. “However much you like Canadians—and they are likeable—they did elect Justin Trudeau as prime minister for nine years. Canada’s voting-age population is about as large as California’s (and just as statist), and its per capita income is almost exactly as small as Mississippi’s. Erase the border, and welfare dollars would rush northward with the hydrological power of the tide rushing into the Bay of Fundy.”
EVERYTHING OBAMA TOUCHES. . .
Obama made sure that Rick Caruso, who is extremely competent, lost to utterly incompetent Mayor Karen (her real name) https://t.co/Fveo189wBp
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 8, 2025
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Toyota invests $44.4M in private Japanese spaceflight company.
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THE TELEGRAPH: Young, single men are leaving traditional churches. They found a more ‘masculine’ alternative:
Young, single men are flocking to the Orthodox church after discovering the “masculine” Christian religion through online influencers.
Some converts said they felt disillusioned with the “feminisation” of the Protestant church and were attracted to the “authenticity” of Orthodoxy, which they claim pushes them physically and mentally.
Priests are now planning to open new parishes to accommodate the “tsunami” of young men who have converted since the pandemic.
IT HELPS TO KNOW HOW THINGS WORK, ASIDE FROM PUSHING THE BUTTON:
I listened to an interview on the radio about the fires in California. A woman being interviewed said she couldn't leave her house because the power was out and her garage door is electric. Apparently she doesn't know the pull cord dangling from the door allows her to open it.
— Military Arms (@MAC_Arms) January 8, 2025
Left unsaid: Did the interviewer fill her in or were they just as clueless?
DISPATCHES FROM THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH: Starmer accused of ‘cowardice’ as Labour votes to block national grooming inquiry.
Labour MPs have blocked an attempt to initiate a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
The amendment put forward by Conservative MPs that would have piled pressure on the Government to hold a statutory inquiry into historic child sexual exploitation was voted down by 364 to 111.
The move was branded as an “act of cowardice” by Conservatives following the vote.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “It is disgusting that Keir Starmer has used his supermajority in Parliament to block a national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal.
“Labour MPs have put their Party ahead of getting to the truth and turned a blind eye to justice for the victims. Labour MPs will have to explain to the British people why they are against learning the truth behind the torture and rape of countless vulnerable girls.
“We will not let them forget this act of cowardice.”
I FEEL LIKE A NON-BORING HONDA BREAKS SOME KIND OF A LAW: The Wild, Lamborghini-Shaped Honda 0 Saloon Is Coming to U.S. Roads.
THERE’S PLENTY MORE TRAGEDY YET TO UNFOLD, LARGELY SELF-INFLICTED:
A couple of years ago, insurance companies put in the necessary requests to the state of California to raise their rates. They were denied. So most of them pulled out of CA. It has been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get house ins here since then.
Many of these now… https://t.co/1Ghd5In1OA— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) January 8, 2025
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