October 10, 2024

COLUMBUS’S ADVICE:  LET’S STICK IT OUT JUST A LITTLE LONGER:  When Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain on August 3, 1492, he expected the trip to the Orient would take two months.  By October 10 (this day in history) the crew of the Santa Maria was ready to mutiny, and Columbus wasn’t feeling so great about the voyage either.  But he managed to convince them to keep going a little longer.  Early on October 12, land was sighted by a seaman aboard the Pinta.

(Columbus later claimed that he personally had sighted land first, but the consensus seems to be that he was a liar motivated by the fact that a reward had been offered to the man who first sighted land.)

Posted at 5:12 am by Gail Heriot

October 9, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CBS NEWS LIES:

“Besides inserting a different response from Harris, CBS edited out everything about Harris defending Israel from Hamas and Hezbollah and their right to do so,” Miller continued. “The tracks time up almost exactly. This was not ‘edited for time’ as CBS and 60 Minutes will likely claim.”

UPDATE (From Ed): Miller ponders if the CBS edits dovetail with their massive anti-Israel bias, as exposed in their ongoing struggle session with Tony Dokoupil over his grievous crime of committing actual journalism by interviewing Ta-Nehisi Coates:

UPDATE (9:19 pm) John Nolte makes the connection: CBS Corruption – Anchor Shamed for Coates Interview, ‘60 Minutes’ Rigs Kamala Interview.  “If CBS had released the full, unedited transcript, Kamala’s word salad answer would be found elsewhere in the transcript, and it’s not. So this is not an unedited transcript. This is the Kamala Harris Campaign-Approved Transcript. And let us never forget that this is the same CBS News and 60 Minutes that still hasn’t retracted its lies about the Hunter Biden laptop being Russian disinformation. So, to sum things up, if you gently ask an antisemitic leftist like Ta-Nehisi Coates a few challenging questions, CBS News will publicly shame you until you buckle. But if you rig an interview to make a Democrat look smarter than she is, that’s a-okay. Antisemites and Democrats sure got it good…Especially at CBS.”

Posted at 9:14 pm by Stephen Green

COLUMBIA BROADCASTING STRUGGLE SESSION UPDATE: ‘Shut the F*ck Up:’ CBS Staffers Escalate Criticism of Tony Dokoupil’s Hostility on Palestine [sic – Ed]. The far left Zeteo Substack, created by Mehdi Hasan, formerly with MSNBC (and where John Harwood and even Greta Thunberg(!) have slots on the masthead), gives the game away with what happened to Tony Dokoupil after he committed journalism at CBS:

It was the sitdown with Coates, who was promoting his new book The Message, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Due to the fraught nature of the book, which features an essay on the “apartheid” Coates witnessed in the occupied West Bank, the network went through its standard protocol of vetting questions through its legal, standards, and race and culture departments. The properly vetted questions were then included on what’s known as a “one-sheet,” from which everyone within the show works.

As newsroom staffers pointed out to Zeteo, the “one-sheet is done for a reason,” which is to work within editorial standards. Hosts or reporters can push back and discuss what is on the sheet and whether it has been properly fact-checked, but one has to be working within that process to begin with.

While co-host Nate Burleson stuck to the plan with his first question, Dokoupil immediately deviated from the script. The anchor said that Coates’ book “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” wondered if the author was “offended by the Jewish state,” and questioned why he didn’t include “appropriate” context about the Palestinians’ role in their own oppression. Dokoupil’s ex-wife and two children live in Israel, by the way, something he did not disclose in the interview.

“Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it?” Dokoupil pointedly asked. “Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?”

“There is no shortage of that perspective in American media,” Coates calmly responded.

“What is it that particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state, that is a Jewish safe place, and not any of the other states out there?” Dokoupil wondered.

“There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state,” Coates replied. “I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are.”

Journalism ethics experts have criticized Dokoupil’s “gotcha” and “performative” questions that were designed to put Coates on the defensive.

Dokoupil’s hijacking of the interview left both Burleson and co-host Gayle King largely sidelined throughout the discussion. In fact, King had planned to ask Coates about Hamas’ role in the war with Israel, something that the author revealed in a podcast interview with Trevor Noah. According to Coates, King had approached him backstage with his book full of her handwritten notes, explaining that she was going to ask him some specific questions.

“While on the one hand, [Dokoupil] probably did me a service… by just kind of commandeering that interview, I don’t think he did Nate and Gayle a service, and I’m really, really sorry for them,” he told Noah.

In his conversation with Mehdi, Coates said that while he was a “little surprised” by Dokoupil, he soon realized he “was in a fight” but was prepared.

As Stephen Miller tweets, “Coates had every question asked of him vetted through what CBS calls a race and culture department. They are even calling it ‘standard protocol.’ This is what CBS News is now.”

More from Zeteo:

Even before Coates was all but accused of being an antisemitic terrorist by Dokoupil last week, the CBS anchor had raised eyebrows at the network over the past year with his overt editorializing, especially regarding topics involving Israel and Gaza.

“If Tony would just shut the fuck up, none of this would be happening,” one CBS insider told Zeteo.

For instance, following a report in April on the University of Southern California canceling its Muslim valedictorian’s speech over “safety concerns” due to her pro-Palestinian views, Dokoupil said it spoke to a “bigger debate about what’s acceptable public speech” and suggested the student had called “for the complete abolishment of Israel,” prompting internal complaints.

Yes, we can’t report on the air what those crazy MAGA-hat wearing nutters at, err, NPR reported in April:

Asna Tabassum was selected as this year’s valedictorian. But student groups called for the decision to be reconsidered due to Tabassum’s social media content on the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Tabassum’s Instagram page links to a slideshow that says “learn about what’s happening in Palestine, and how to help,” and criticizes Zionism as “a racist settler-colonial ideology that advocates for a jewish ethnostate built on palestinian land.” The slideshow calls for a “one-state solution” that “would mean palestinian liberation, and the complete abolishment of the state of israel.”

Best that their on-air journalist “just shut the f*** up,” instead. There are rules at CBS this sort of thing. According to the Free Press, these rules can require doublethink that would make the Inner Party of Oceania blush: Does CBS News Know Where Jerusalem Is?

In late August, Mark Memmott, the senior director of standards and practices at CBS News, sent an email to all CBS News employees reminding them to “be careful with some terms when we talk or write about the news” from Israel and Gaza. One of the words on Memmott’s list of terms was Jerusalem.

Of Jerusalem, Memmott wrote: “Do not refer to it as being in Israel.”

He continued, in a note sent to thousands of journalists at the network: “Yes, the U.S. embassy is there and the Trump administration recognized it as being Israel’s capital. But its status is disputed. The status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel regards Jerusalem as its ‘eternal and undivided’ capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem—occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war—as the capital of a future state.”

Jerusalem’s status is indeed contested. For instance, the United States’ embassy in Israel is in Jerusalem, and the Jordanian Islamic Waqf has custody of its holy sites. But acknowledging the competing claims on different parts of the city, or declining to refer to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, are one thing. Denying that it is in Israel at all is quite another.

In which country is the Israeli Knesset, the home of the Israeli prime minister and the home of the Israeli president, located? The answer to that question is self-evident. Except, it seems, at CBS. In the rest of the United States, the answer is clear: Since 1995, when Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, the government has recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

This latest revelation comes after CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil was admonished by executives at the network for his interview of best-selling author Ta-Nahesi Coates about his new anti-Israel book, The Message.

The other thing we’ve learned, Jeffrey Blehar writes at NRO in “The Obscene Public Humiliation Ritual of CBS’s Tony Dokoupil” is that, despite the premise of Nellie Bowles’ recent book, The Morning after the Revolution, wide swatches of the left are still very much stuck in the mindset of 2020:

The debate was not about Dokoupil, really; instead, it was about “whether Israel should exist at all” and why it wasn’t fair that Coates was prevented from making his case uninterrupted. (I can’t help but imagine a similar talk show in, say, Hamburg in 1943.)

Apparently, by the end of it all Dokoupil finally broke down and apologized (in tears) for potentially “endangering” any of his CBS colleagues and then submitted to an hourlong deprogramming session with CBS’s in-house “Race and Culture Unit” to instruct him in “context, tone, and intention,” so that he can be a more proper supplicant to the next elite political or cultural messiah who walks through the door. He may also have been shipped off to reeducation camp, though this is not yet documented in the reporting.

Commentary is almost superfluous, and beyond me at this particular point. For I am enraged at watching us reenact the public humiliation rituals that we witnessed in 2020, and imported from Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China long before that time. The same internal pressure and public lobbying we saw in the James Bennet affair at the New York Times years ago — and boy doesn’t this feel ironic given the role Bennet played in shaping Coates’s career — has now been brought to bear on anyone who dares cross such an elite messiah, particularly when he bears a message beloved by the younger generations staffing the media industry. We all know why this happened, because all of this has happened before. We thought it would not happen again, and we were wrong.

For years, the left seemed to be permanently stuck in the 1960s and ‘70s. Now the touchstone is 2020, and likely will be, for the foreseeable future.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: So Science-y! Bill Nye Says Voting for Kamala Harris Will Stop Hurricanes.

We’ll start this story with the usual disclaimer: Bill Nye is not a scientist. He has no degree in science and no background in science. HIs degree is in mechanical engineering and he’s a comedian.

So no one should take him seriously on any field of science, let alone climate change.

But here he is, being so science-y and saying the way to stop storms like Hurricane Milton is to vote for Kamala Harris:

But alas, it’s too late for that, Bill:

Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama’s first administration, he added.

— President ‘has four years to save Earth,’ the London Guardian, January 17, 2009.

But then, the year prior, Obama promised his merely winning his party’s presidential nomination would do the job:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children … this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

If only Barack hadn’t lost his bottle and allowed his “science” “czar” to shoot pollution into the atmosphere — that would have done the trick, for sure:

The president’s new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth’s air. John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.

“It’s got to be looked at,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.”

Of course, if it didn’t work, the Dr. Strangelove-esque scientist was prepared to inflict even sterner measures upon the population — or eventually, the lack thereof.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Greta Thunberg Accuses Germany of Genocide Complicity over Israel Support.

The former darling of the apocalyptic climate change movement, Greta Thunberg joined a Berlin protest against Israel on the anniversary of the October 7th terror attacks on the Jewish state.

In a tacit admission that there are other issues in the world, and that perhaps the end of the world is not nigh, Thunberg has increasingly begun to associate herself with the Palestinian cause.

Speaking from a “Solidarity with Palestine” rally on Monday in Berlin, the keffiyeh scarf-clad 21-year-old Swedish activist accused the German government of being complicit in a “genocide” in Gaza by supporting the Israeli effort to eradicate the Hamas terrorists responsible for the October 7th attacks and who still have dozens of hostages held captive.

“The German government is complicit in this genocide. It finances and legitimises Israel’s apartheid-state occupation and genocide,” Thunberg said.

“It is absolutely… I can’t even find the words to tell you how upset it makes me to see how Germany and how the German police are treating peaceful protesters for saying no to genocide,” she added.

The protest that the climate activist joined in Berlin on Monday later descended into violence, with agitators reportedly throwing rocks and launching fireworks at police officers, who in turn deployed pepper spray to quell the mob.

As Jon Gabriel in June about America’s never-ending protests: Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same. “One year, statues are toppled and the next, Jews are bullied, but it’s amazing how the far-left treats such wildly diverse issues with the same small toolbox. It has ever been thus. As one radical wrote for a Students for a Democratic Society publication in the 1960s, ‘The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.’”

Posted at 8:16 pm by Ed Driscoll

SPACEX:

Posted at 7:53 pm by Glenn Reynolds

I DONATED CONVALESCENT PLASMA REGULARLY FOR SIX MONTHS AFTER I HAD COVID IN LATE 2020: Missed COVID Lifesaver: Johns Hopkins Reveals How Plasma Therapy Could Have Saved Thousands. “A new study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimates that widespread use of convalescent plasma, especially among outpatients at high risk for severe disease and hospitalized patients in the early stages of their admission, could have saved thousands of lives in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Plus: “If 15% of outpatients had received convalescent plasma, the authors estimate that between 85,268 and 227,377 hospitalizations would have been avoided. If 75% of outpatients received convalescent plasma, between 426,331 and 1,136,880 hospitalizations would have been avoided.”

People in my area used it, but there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm among the medical community as a whole. That lack of enthusiasm appears to have been mistaken.

Posted at 7:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ANOTHER CONSPIRACY THEORY PROVEN TRUE.

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

UNIVERSITIES ARE DOING EDUCATION BADLY. But is it even more purposeful than we suspected? Repeating what should be taught in K-12 means “students receive insufficient instruction in their ‘specialization’ area, thereby creating a felt need to pursue further study at the graduate level”–which brings in more cash.

Posted at 4:57 pm by Robert Shibley

JAKE TAPPER BESTED BY FORMER GQ MOTORING JOURNALIST:

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Kansas professor on leave after calling to ‘shoot’ men who won’t vote for female president.

A University of Kansas professor is on administrative leave after a viral clip circulating social media Wednesday showed him calling for men who refuse to vote for a female presidential candidate to be shot.

The professor in the clip appears to be addressing a lecture hall full of students. He bluntly tells the students that men who underestimate a woman’s ability to lead the country should be shot, arguing “they clearly don’t understand the way the world works.”

“It’s what frustrates me, there are going to be some males in our society that will refuse to vote for a potential female president because they don’t think females are smart enough to be president,” he says. “We can line all those guys up and shoot them.”

The professor then adds, “Scratch that from the recording, I don’t want the dean hearing that I said that.”

Why are leftist monopoly institutions such cesspits of hate?

Posted at 2:50 pm by Ed Driscoll

SPACE: NASA Strengthens Safety Protocol in Response to Persistent Air Leak in International Space Station.

The leak, first identified in 2019 within the Zvezda module’s PrK vestibule, has been under investigation and mitigation efforts.

A report from NASA’s Office of Inspector General indicated that the leak had escalated to nearly 1.7 kilograms per day by April 2024, prompting the ISS program to categorise it as a high-risk issue. However, NASA officials have reported significant improvements, noting that recent repairs have decreased the leak rate by about one-third.

The root cause of the leak remains under scrutiny, with both NASA and Roscosmos investigating internal and external welds. As a precaution, station crews maintain the hatch to the affected area closed when not in use to minimize the leak’s impact on overall station operations.

While NASA and Roscosmos collaborate on resolving the issue, they have not yet agreed on what constitutes an “untenable” leak rate. If the situation deteriorates further, a potential long-term solution could involve permanently sealing the hatch, which would eliminate a docking port for Progress and Soyuz spacecraft.

“Long-term” isn’t much for a station tentatively scheduled to be deorbited in 2030.

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green