January 7, 2025
January 6, 2025
OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.
KEEP THE WARTHOGS FLYING: Flight of the old Hog: The US Air Force has a new task for its Cold War tank smashers.
YES, RISING INFLATION AND A FLAT ECONOMY WILL DO THAT: Wow, Democrats Lost the Capitol Riot Narrative Big Time.
LET HE WHO HAS NOT OPERATED A CHICOM SECRET POLICE STATION IN NEW YORK CAST THE FIRST STONE: New York Resident Pleads Guilty to Operating Secret Police Station of the Chinese Government in Lower Manhattan.
Law & Order is always looking for plots that magically place the Red State menace in downtown New York — here’s the ultimate Red Menace, if Dick Wolf is still looking for stories “ripped from the headlines.”
WASHINGTON POST TO LAY OFF “MANY DOZENS” AS READERSHIP CRASHES:
Last week, two other senior political reporters for the Washington Post — Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer — left the publication to take up new positions at The Atlantic, the magazine owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
In late October, two Washington Post staffers quit its editorial board in protest of Bezos’ decision to block an endorsement of the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Bezos said the move to block the endorsement was made in order to bolster public confidence in his newspaper’s impartiality.
But readers of the newspaper were angered by the move. As many as 250,000 subscribers canceled their memberships as a result, according to reports.
As Ace of Spades writes in response:
I don’t think any of these woke media outlets can ever reclaim the figleaf of nonpartisanship. They will never, never again be considered authoritative or honest.
Therefore, there is no point in attempting to “re-position” CNN or the Washington Post as “centrist” and “objective.” Anyone who wasn’t a full on TDS #Resistance leftist stopped going to these sources years and years ago, and they’re not coming back. And as these outlets shed audience, they catered harder and harder to the remaining audience of mentally ill leftwing lunatics, which caused even Democrat normies to flee, and left their remaining audience base even more partisan and weird.
There is no way — none — to reverse this, so it’s my business advice that they not even try. The only course is to accept that they are permanently diminished and marginalized as fringe outlets of the intensely woke ghetto. They have to downsize until they hit the right, profitable level for a niche conspiracy-theory outlet.
They will have to shed at least half of their staff.
#SorryNotSorry. You effed around, and now you’re finding out.
Related: Will the media carry its snobbery problem into the next Trump era?
At the 92nd Street Y last month, an audience paid actual money to watch the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin record her podcast with Lincoln Project founding member George Conway. Admission was $20 — but can you really put a price on watching two deranged NeverTrumpers cope with the reality of a looming second Trump presidency?
In a set reminiscent of Inside the Actors Studio, Rubin began waxing poetic about why the media is so “mamsy-pamsey.”
This is the same woman who went from calling Barack Obama a “boring gasbag” to claiming his “mere presence reminded us of what a dignified, responsible president sounds like.” She has also performed a well-documented back flip on John Bolton that would make your head spin.
Those who agree to a 92nd Street Y discussion can apparently set wide boundaries about topics that they consider to be Omertà. (Jimmy Page spoke there a decade ago to plug one of his coffee table books, very likely knowing that there would be absolutely no discussion about the more sordid aspects of his past.)
During her 92nd Street Y interview with Conway, in-between insulting conservative Trump voters, Rubin also claimed:
Though Rubin has frequently criticized the Washington Post, particularly its owner Jeff Bezos, for trying to become more politically neutral, she has made no effort to resign out of protest and even joked about rebelling from within the paper.
“I can be a rebel in my own house because the mainstream media is now, as we talked about, kind of capitulating, so I get to, like, thumb my nose,” Rubin joked.
She also called out claims of her being politically biased, saying, “I think I am not biased at all. I am just accurate. Deadly accurate.”
Naturally, there was no pushback about how she was billed as the WaPo’s token conservative and Romney supporter in 2012 – and on some Websites in desperate need of updating, is still listed as a conservative:
By the way, when does Rubin bail out from the Post? Flashback to late October: Jennifer Rubin’s resignation from the Washington Post is surely imminent.
The non-endorsement is the new endorsement! Hot on the heels of the Los Angeles Times’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the presidential race, a controversial call made by the paper’s owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong that has been met with multiple staff resignations, the Washington Post is following suit.
A statement published Friday reads: “The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”
Public statements from leading Post personalities have been aghast. Columnist Karen Attiah tweeted, “Jesus Christ.” Then, an hour later, “…” Then an hour later still, “What an absolute stab in the back. What an insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line, to call out threats to human rights and democracy.”
Of most interest to Cockburn, however, were the remarks of fellow columnist and MSNBC mainstay Jennifer Rubin to the LA Times resignations earlier in the week. In response to Sewell Chan’s resignation from the Times, she wrote, “Bravo. All respect.” Followed by, “and where are the rest of them?”
The implication is clear: now that her paper, too, is refusing to endorse the sainted Kamala Harris, Rubin must be set to join the charge of resignations in disgust, along with Robert Kagan, as a sort-of Potomac Joan of Arc. The prospect brings a tear to Cockburn’s eye. Such bravery.
But of the “unexpectedly” exceedingly slow-motion, waiting-to-develop style.
#JOURNALISM:
This was already Community Noted and you STILL decided to retweet the lie.
Thre is only one man of low character here, John.
Would you like a mirror, you unemployed hack?
— Grateful Calvin (@shoveitjack) January 6, 2025
It's the same crew, very single time. https://t.co/clK2p76p8P pic.twitter.com/2X8Am5sQ49
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) January 6, 2025
The same usual slew of journalists are going after a disabled man who needs a walking cane and not a single one of them will retract or apologize. What does that make you look like, Sam? https://t.co/clK2p76p8P
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) January 6, 2025
WHEN A COMET AND AN ASTEROID LOVE EACH OTHER VERY MUCH: This Strange Comet-Asteroid Hybrid Is Like Nothing Else in The Solar System.
BIDEN’S PARTING GIFTS: Joe Biden just released 11 Al Qaeda members from GITMO. “In the most dramatic step in years to reduce the population at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the Biden administration has transferred 11 Yemeni detainees to Oman, which has agreed to help resettle them and provide security monitoring.”
ESCAPING THE AI GUILT TRAP IN TEXAS: Decades of anti-discrimination overreach devastated academic freedom—now it’s targeting the future of knowledge.
HEH:
Kamala after certifying the election for Trump: pic.twitter.com/YsmY8utNh0
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 6, 2025
The drunk-sounding TED talk is real. Only the background was changed.
CDR SALAMANDER: The PRC is Signaling its First Moves. “For the most base of reasons of profit and political convenience, our nations’ governmental and business elite have sleepwalked their nations into a significant disadvantage should the PRC decide in the next decade to go kinetic in the Western Pacific.”
THE E.V. BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Porsche walks back EVs – people still want gas cars.
UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Botox for burping? Doctors use injections to treat ‘no-burp syndrome.’ “The cricopharyngeus is the main muscle of the upper esophageal sphincter, the top gate of the food pipe. With no burp syndrome, this muscle does not relax, which interferes with the burping process, according to Neil Chheda, MD, associate professor and vice chair in the department of otolaryngology and chief of the division of laryngology at UF Health in Gainesville, Florida.”
I had no idea there are people who can’t burp. Then again, I do have two teenage boys.
BIDEN SHAMES PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM EVEN FURTHER BY GIVING IT TO “SCIENCE GUY” BILL NYE:
The purpose of giving Nye (who is not in fact a "science guy") this award was so that when he is mentioned in the media going forward he can be referred to as "Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Bill Nye" – how dare you question Nye, he's a PMF winner. https://t.co/Tfv1QfBNYL
— William A. Jacobson (@wajacobson) January 5, 2025
On the other hand, as America’s Newspaper of Record notes, there may still be rough times ahead for Nye:
Bill Nye's Medal Revoked After Old Hate Speech Comes To Light https://t.co/mKLRz2PkFI pic.twitter.com/eXMWN0VtRJ
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 6, 2025
VDH: Conspiracies Too Awful to Imagine?
3. Never in recent election history had a presidential candidate in the midst of the final stretch of the campaign been the target of two assassination attempts—in part enabled by a climate of widespread and acceptable vituperation that equated Trump with a vile Hitler, fascist, Nazi, and dictator and thus encouraged unhinged would-be killers to delude themselves into believing they would forever be enshrined as heroes. And never would social media influencers, columnists, and celebrities voice near approval of such attempts on the leading presidential candidate’s life.
The first would-be assassin was an amateur shooter, who easily evaded Secret Service scrutiny to post himself in sight of bystanders, as he enjoyed a direct line of fire at Trump. Meanwhile, local law enforcement was desperately trying, in vain, to warn the lax Secret Service of the immediate danger to the president. The second wannabe assassin approached with impunity the most recognizably vulnerable spot on a local golf course, staked out a shooting position, and would have, if not spotted, been within minutes of having an uninterrupted shot at the president.
4. Finally, not since the Woodrow Wilson scandal of 1919-1920, have the media and the Democratic left conspired to hide the morbidities of a president that left him unfit mentally and physically to carry out the duties of the office.
That current and still ongoing covert effort put the nation at great risk, as evidenced by the catastrophic humiliation in Kabul, the successful Russian gamble that the U.S. would not or could not deter Putin from invading Ukraine, the unsteady and anemic reaction to the theater-wide wars in the Middle East, the hyperinflation of 2021-2, the erasure of the southern border, the deliberate greenlighting of some 12 million illegal aliens into the United States, and the weaponization of the FBI, CIA, and DOJ.
The final irony?
Those who were perpetrators of these illicit, unethical, and unprecedented efforts were themselves the first and most prominent to project Trump as the promulgator of conspiracies to debilitate the very institutions that they had already undermined and disgraced.
Read the whole thing.
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Under Cabinet Lights,40 LED Rechargeable Battery Operated Motion Sensor Light Indoor. #CommissionEarned
MARK JUDGE: NYT Reporter Regrets Kavanaugh Hit: “I Have Learned Some Lessons.”
The media now routinely runs with false stories (Russiagate), covers up inconvenient facts (the Hunter Biden laptops), and maligns people who are both public figures and private individuals. Lies and errors are rampant, and they never get corrected. We are a long way from 1964 or even Watergate, when Woodward and Bernstein supposedly agonized for weeks over a small mistake they once made in their reporting. This is why Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against The New York Times is moving forward, as is a lawsuit against CNN’s Jake Tapper. It’s why ABC and George Stephanopoulos just had to pay Trump $15 million for falsely claiming that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll.
It also might be why David Enrich is having an attack of conscience even as he prepares to do battle with the right as a defender of journalistic integrity. I wish him luck pulling it off. But it would be more convincing if he would first come clean about what he did to Brett, to me, and to our friends.
Read the whole thing.
SO HERE’S THE LATEST THING WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE EMBARRASSED BY OR CONCERNED ABOUT OR WHATEVER: Why Is the Right Obsessed With Epic Poetry?
Look, the reason is right there on the label: they’re epic.
NEXT STOP, JANUARY 20: It’s Official: 2024 Election Has Been Certified
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Snow Joe 15A Electric Snow Blower with Dual LED Lights. #CommissionEarned