April 6, 2025

IGNORANT ARMIES:

Posted at 6:38 pm by Glenn Reynolds 143

DESPACHOS DESDE EL AGUJERO DE LA MEMORIA: Pirates will restore Roberto Clemente sign to right field wall following fan backlash at its removal.

The Pittsburgh Pirates will restore a sign honoring franchise icon Roberto Clemente to the right field wall following fan backlash at its removal.

In the sign’s place is an ad for Surfside alcoholic drinks.

Many fans took to social media over the weekend to express outrage over the sign’s removal. Roberto Clemente Jr. also shared his disbelief at the removal of the image.

It’s the 2020s — entire sports teams have been memory holed, so it’s not surprising to see an individual player also disappear as well, but it’s good to see his tribute back.

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 42

NOW THAT’S SOME SERIOUS POOL HUSTLING!

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 246

THIS IS CNN: Trump Ag Secretary Laughs After Jake Tapper Insists ‘I’m NOT On The Left.’

Jake Tapper has denied being “of the left.”

On Sunday’s edition of CNN’s State of the Union, host Tapper, in a loaded question, asked Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins: “How long do you anticipate this tariff chaos is going to be going on? 30 days, 60 days, 90 days?”

In response, Rollins wryly responded:

“We’re now two days in, right? You’ve got two days of data. Everyone, especially on your side, on the left, is freaking out.“

Snapped back Tapper: “I’m not on the left.”

That earned a sardonic laugh [see screencap] and “thank you” from Rollins.

So, Tapper is “not on the left.” Really? Let’s go to his record.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 5:23 pm by Ed Driscoll 94

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How Much Ammo Do You Carry? “It might be that, instead of spending so much time talking about all the spare ammo we carry, it would be a better idea to focus on improving our ability to hit a target quickly and accurately with that first shot.”

Posted at 4:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 149

PREMISE OVERLOAD: During the protests over the Bush-Cheney War on Terror 20 years ago, Glenn always used to ask, “where are the giant papier-mâché puppets?” Finally, like Pinocchio, they’ve gotten their wish, and they’ve become sentient. Well, almost:

Wait — she’s apparently implying that Trump is a Nazi because there is a swastika in the middle of the Betsy Ross flag. But just in time for Fourth of July 2019, Nike and Colin Kaepernick ginned up a protest to sell his sneakers by explicitly calling the Betsy Ross flag a symbol of hate:

The Pied Piper of wokeness, Colin Kaepernick‏, kicked off the week by successfully pressuring Nike to recall a shoe adorned with the original 13-star American flag attributed to America’s founding mother, Betsy Ross.

For years, polite liberal opinion has lectured us that Kaepernick, who famously kneeled during the national anthem when he was an NFL football player, didn’t hate America — he just wanted to protest police brutality against African Americans. We were to also overlook the time he wore socks featuring pigs dressed as police officers and the time he wore Fidel Castro on his T-shirt. Hillary Clinton declared those kneeling during the anthem were “not against our anthem or our flag.”

Whoops.

Now Kaepernick is tossing Betsy Ross into the basket of deplorables, while Democratic presidential contenders like Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand and Beto O’Rourke clap along like well-trained seals.

This quickly set off quite a chain reaction that year:

● Major League Soccer Declares Betsy Ross Flag a ‘Symbol of Hate.’

● Nike stocks surge 2% following controversial decision to recall ‘Betsy Ross Flag’ sneakers after star endorser Colin Kaepernick claims they are offensive due to slavery ties.

● Jim Treacher wrote on July 3rd 2019, Betsy Ross’s flag design “was good enough for Obama’s inauguration. Not anymore. If Betsy Ross is racist now, how about the 76ers? The Patriots? Should we start picketing showings of Hamilton?”

● That same day, “MSNBC guest Michael Eric Dyson compared the Betsy Ross American flag to the Nazi swastika and a burning Ku Klux Klan cross.”

Sort of like those earlier Hitlers George Bush and Dick Cheney last year, was the Betsy Ross Flag temporarily rehabilitated, but only to attack Trump once again, or has America always been born of original sin? Or did the young theater kid not remember 2019’s corporate wilding attack on the flag before swinging into action?

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 149

DISPATCHES FROM THE PALACE GUARD COMEDIANS: SNL Mocks Elon Musk, Not Democrats Torching Teslas.

The sketch brought “SNL” alum Mike Myers back to portray Musk. The fictional Musk bragged that a new Tesla model offers an adaptation for modern times.

It vandalizes itself.

Recently, our dealerships have been the targets of many attacks … Suddenly no one likes Tesla cars. I asked myself why, then I answered myself. Because of me!”

His solution? The Tesla Model V.

“The first electric car in history to be fully self-vandalizing! With features like self-smashing headlights, self-slashing tires and AI-powered graffiti … You can choose from penises or swastikas, or my favorite: swastikas made out of penises!”

The vandals in question could spend years behind bars for their actions. Tesla owners, likely Democrats who hoped their purchase would positively impact the climate, now fear for their safety.

“SNL” could have mocked the raging hypocrisy in play. Liberals have spent years demanding more EVs to prevent Climate Change. Now, their party is cheering on attacks against the number one electric car company in the country.

Instead, they turn what many dub domestic terrorism into a laugh line. Maybe [Mel] Brooks can visit the show’s writers’ room and give them a crash course on Humanity 101.

Not surprisingly, SNL in its current ancient and enfeebled state lacks the courage to force their own audience to ask themselves, “Are we the baddies?”

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 72

I DUNNO, THAT’S PRETTY EXPENSIVE: Mega Millions ticket price goes up, but bigger jackpots expected. “Those wanting to play Mega Millions now have to pay more for a ticket — the next drawing in the multi-state lottery will cost $5, more than double its long-time cost.”

Five bucks for a lottery ticket? That’s a lot for an impulse purchase with a tiny chance of paying off.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Glenn Reynolds 145

RALLYING THE ELDERLY FAITHFUL:

Related:

Plus: Why were the anti-Trump protests yesterday called “Hands Off”? “The response ‘hands off’ seems weak. Who will ‘hands off’ convince? How did that slogan emerge?”

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 125

‘GO BACK TO AFRICA!’ How the Democratic Party Became the Party of Xenophobes and Racists.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is originally from Mogadishu, Somalia. You’ve gotta keep that in mind to fully appreciate her astonishing lack of self-awareness:

“Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., also suggested Musk did not care for democracy because he came from South Africa.

“Elon Musk, who grew up in apartheid, Trump who worships dictators around the country, and strong men, are not interested in our constitutional republic,” Omar said.

Interestingly, Omar and Musk both arrived in America in 1995. (In an alternate timeline, maybe they walked by each other in the airport.) It’s unclear why someone of Somalian origin is any more or less trustworthy than someone from South Africa.

The Democrats are trying to scale a political mountain, but they better be careful: The slope is awfully slippery.

Fox News noted that Elon Musk’s opposition to apartheid has been long established:

Despite these claims, a Snopes fact-check found the reason Musk left his birth country in the first place was to avoid military service because he did not want to fight for an apartheid state.

Furthermore, Musk discussed his South African upbringing in a 2013 interview:

INTERVIEWER: You grew up in South Africa. […] You were in the army there?

MUSK: No. I left at 17. Well, in part, in order to avoid conscription in the army.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, you left so you didn’t have to deal with the army.

MUSK: You know, spending two years suppressing Black people doesn’t seem to be a great use of time.

It’s 2025, and one political party is still screaming, “Go back to Africa!” at its enemies. And it’s not the Republican Party. Today, the Democrats are actively trafficking in bigotry, racism, and xenophobia.

Frankly, it stinks.

(Even worse than Axe Body Spray.)

As P.J. O’Rourke famously wrote in 1991’s Parliament of Whores:

Not long after Andy [Ferguson] and I met, we were driving down Pennsylvania Avenue and encountered some or another noisy pinko demonstration. “How come,” I asked Andy, “whenever something upsets the Left, you see immediate marches and parades and rallies with signs already printed and rhyming slogans already composed, whereas whenever something upsets the Right, you see two members of the Young Americans for Freedom waving a six-inch American flag?”

“We have jobs,” said Andy.

But the left have astroturfed signs, backed up with preprinted cue cards!

 

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 107

ROGER KIMBALL: Actions v. Words.

Donald Trump is different. He does what others say is impossible. Some commentator (I forget who) recently employed a quip attributed to Winston Churchill about Trump.  Churchill is supposed to have said that U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was “the only bull I know who carries his china shop with him.” Apparently, Churchill did not say that. But it is a memorable image, and one can understand why someone would apply it to Donald Trump. He has been in office fewer than 100 days, yet look at the disruptions he has instigated. On his first day, he abolished all “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs throughout the federal government.  He also forbade simply renaming those programs in order to carry on their racist, inequitable work by subterfuge. He insisted that universities jettison their coddling of racist and anti-Semitic policies as a condition for receiving federal money. As of this writing, hundreds of millions of dollars have been withheld from Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and other elite institutions for failing to abide by this directive. He tapped Elon Musk to help him identify and eliminate waste and fraud in the government.  The revelations are stunning.  It’s almost as if the U.S. government had evolved into a machine to serve politicians at the taxpayer’s expense.

This last week, Trump got around to one of the main things he campaigned on, his “favorite word,” tariffs. The stock market cratered, the establishment recoiled like a scrotum in icy water, and the acrid scent of panic was everywhere. I wrote about the tariffs the morning of what Trump called “Liberation Day” before the market opened. I expected market tumult but was taken aback by the ferocity of the market reaction.

Still, I continue to believe that we should give Trump’s strong medicine a chance to work. I think that the commentator Tanvi Ratner is correct: the tariffs “aren’t a trade tweak,” she wrote, “they’re the first move in a full-spectrum reset.” As the stock market declines, investors flee to treasury bonds, forcing the yield on those bonds lower. This year, almost $10 trillion will need to be refinanced. Every basis point that the yield declines translates into a billion-dollar annual savings in loan repayment. Thus, a 0.5% drop, she points out,  would save $500 billion over a decade. As of this writing, the yield has declined about 0.7 points.  That’s a lot of money saved.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 104

YOU GO, GIRL! Joan of Arc was non-binary, schoolchildren taught.

Joan of Arc was non-binary, secondary school pupils are being taught.

Lesson plans produced for English language students aged between 11 and 14 include the claim about the medieval figure, who is the patron saint of France and fought against the English during the Hundred Years’ War.

In the Who We Are anthology published by Collins, which is made up of “representative and inclusive contemporary texts”, a lesson plan includes a biography that reads: “Joan of Arc (1412-31) is today considered by some to have been non-binary.”

The knight cropped her hair in the male fashion and wore men’s clothes, which formed part of the heresy case against her for which she was burned at the stake in 1431.

But she never claimed not to be female and also did not adopt the non-binary gender identity, which only emerged in the late 20th century.

Robert Tombs, professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge, branded the claim “insulting”.

“Joan of Arc fought as a woman and died as a woman,” he told The Telegraph. “To call her something else is insulting to her and indirectly to all women who are brave enough to risk their lives for their beliefs – as if women are incapable of heroism.”

Carolyn Brown, a retired psychologist now working with the Women’s Rights Network, said: “This is yet another ridiculous example of attempting to rewrite history and erase strong, rebellious female characters from our past.

As they say on Airstrip One, who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 119

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: The Opportunistic End of the Biden Cover-Up.

The people who told you there was nothing wrong with former President Biden are excited to discuss all the ways in which there was absolutely something wrong with former President Biden.

If these people had any capacity for shame, they’d be feeling it about now.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe last week…NBC News’s Jonathan Allen and The Hill’s Amie Parnes discussed their new book, which details the lengths to which the former president’s inner circle reportedly went to keep his deterioration a secret from voters.

Scarborough and his chirpy co-host, Mika Brzezinski, nodded along during the segment, as if they were mere spectators to the effort to hide the president’s condition and not themselves active participants.

“You know,” said Scarborough, “we always look back in retrospect and think things were a certain way, just because it’s the way the media, at the time, defined it.”

You said it, Joe! But you also said this, back in March of last year:

“I’ve said it for years now: he’s cogent,” said Scarborough on Wednesday. “But I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He’s far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been, intellectually, analytically, because he’s been around for 50 years. And, you know — I don’t know if people know this or not — Biden used to be a hothead. Sometimes that Irishman would getting in front of the reasoning. Sometimes he would say things he didn’t want to say.”

“Start your tape right now,” he continued, “because I’m about to tell you the truth. And eff you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second, and I’ve known him for years. The Brzezinskis have known him for 50 years. If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.”

The Obama and Biden administrations (but I repeat myself) would say anything to survive the current newscycle, knowing that their Democratic party operatives with bylines would never call them on their duplicity. I hope it was worth it for those party operatives to sacrifice whatever minimal amount of credibility they had left in their effort to drag the withered husk of Joe Biden over the finish line one last time.

UPDATE: Scott Jennings of CNN effectively calls the rest of CNN full-blown liars over their 2024 reportage:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 103