January 20, 2025

YEP:

Posted at 6:52 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THIS IS (STILL) CNN:

I guess the jury should have added another zero or two or three to the damages awarded in the previous defamation lawsuit.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

I mean, even the NeverTrumpers aren’t buying it.

Thought: This was bait so Elon can sue a lot of people for libel and bankrupt them. But hey, you’d have to be super rich and super smart to set a trap like that. . .

MORE:

Posted at 6:38 pm by Stephen Green

THE NEEDS OF THE PARTY ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE, COMRADE:

And with that, I get to retire that headline for at least the next four years — at least when it comes to the White House.

Posted at 5:52 pm by Stephen Green

THERE’S A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN:

Much more like this, please. And how about an investigation into those who denied Jake’s — and many others’ — right to a speedy trial?

Posted at 5:51 pm by Stephen Green

BILL WHITTLE’S HOT MIC: “In a crisp, pointed, accusatory, ambitious, bold, stirring, decisive and occasionally even poetic speech, Donald J Trump, 47th President of the United States of America, delivers his remarkable Second Inaugural, and Hot Mic host Bill Whittle is there for the play-by-play.”

Good stuff as usual from Bill.

Posted at 5:23 pm by Stephen Green

WHOSE GEAR IS IT, ANYWAY? Camera owner asks Canon, skies: Why is it $5/month for webcam software?

“Software development isn’t free, and I’m happy to pay for software I use regularly,” Zipp writes. “However, Canon is a hardware company, not a software company, and they should—due to the lack of standards—provide software that allows you to use their cameras as intended. Aside from development costs, there’s no justification for a subscription model, particularly from a company earning nearly $3 billion in profit.”

Zipp’s pointed complaint made the front page of Hacker News, where commenters immediately got sidetracked into a discussion of UK tariff laws on video equipment, sneakers, cookies, and ethanol. But further in, recommendations appear for the open source Magic Lantern camera add-on software, or possibly CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) firmware. Whether or not Zipp can better use his camera as a webcam is somewhat beside the point, or at least the point he’s making.

This from the comments was both crude and on the money: “If you charge a subscription for stuff that uses local hardware and doesn’t need to talk to cloud services or anything else that costs the purveyor money, you’re a f***ing piece of s*** and should be ostracized.”

Posted at 4:50 pm by Stephen Green

DON’T PUSH IT GUYS, I’M ABOUT READY TO SET UP MY OWN GUILLOTINES:

Posted at 3:56 pm by Glenn Reynolds

BUT WILL THEY THROW THEIR SUPPORT BEHIND ANYONE COMPETENT? Even Hollywood is turning on LA Mayor Karen Bass.

After her election as mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, Karen Bass was a heroine of California’s Left. A former backer of Fidel Castro, she decisively defeated billionaire businessman Rick Caruso, who spent more than $100 million to try and defeat her. With a struggling economy, rising crime, and a high cost of living, Bass’s election seemed to confirm LA’s final transition from a place of political diversity to a single-party city dominated by a well-organised Left and funders from the public unions.

Now, though, Bass “is a dead woman walking”, as a union organiser friend told me this week. The revelations of incompetence, poor planning, and awful communication, combined with the fact that the LA mayor was partying in Ghana when wildfires started in her city, have worked against her, and yesterday angry protestors gathered outside her home. Some charges made by Donald Trump and Elon Musk tying the disaster to DEI and climate policies are exaggerated. But Bass’s lack of interest in public safety mirrors the new progressive script which prioritises “social justice” over actual justice, racial quotas over merit, and climate alarmism over common sense.

Naturally, Bass, Governor Gavin Newsom and their media supporters reject conservatives’ accusations of incompetence. They say opponents are using the fires as a political “piñata”, and blame the damage on climate change. Yet Steven Koonin, a respected physicist and advisor in the Obama administration, has argued that the real responsibility lies with a slew of bad policies which left the city unprepared for the scale of the disaster. Fires have been a regular feature of life here in Southern California for at least 20 million years. Given recent weather conditions, the city should have known what was coming.

Please take note that it takes longer than 20 million years for lefties to learn anything.

Posted at 3:48 pm by Stephen Green

ISN’T IT, THOUGH?

Posted at 3:24 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THEY KNOW, THEY JUST DON’T CARE:

Posted at 2:55 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THAT WAS FAST: Trump officials shut down CBP One app.

Trump administration officials minutes after the new president took office on Monday shut down a mobile app for migrants to make appointments at the U.S.-Mexico border.

By shutting down the CBP One app, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials essentially canceled all outstanding appointments made by migrants without visas who sought to enter the United States through legal ports of entry.

The app shutdown is part of a series of moves by the incoming administration to crack down on the border, even as migration has decreased significantly in the past six months.

According to CBP numbers, U.S. officials encountered 96,048 foreign nationals at the border in December. About half, 48,722, presented at a port of entry to get formal admission into the United States.

Before November, the last full month with fewer than 100,000 encounters was January of 2021, the month when former President Biden was sworn in. That month, CBP encountered 78,414 people, only 3,098 of whom presented at ports of entry — the rest were encountered by the Border Patrol after crossing the border illegally.

CBP One was a key component of the Biden administration’s efforts to channel migrants through legal pathways to seek refuge in the United States.

President Trump is due to sign 10 executive orders on Monday related to the border, several of which seek to undo those pathways.

I’d say “faster, please,” but the newly sworn-in president and his team are certainly moving with due alacrity.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll