THIS IS JUST THE FIRST STEP … Patagonia Hit With FEC Complaint Alleging Straw Donor Operation That Funneled More Than $1 Million to Democrats.
December 12, 2024
JUSTICE WILL FIND HIM, SOONER OR LATER: Adam Schiff: New Senator, Same Old Hypocrite.
NO CREDIT, JUST KASH: FBI Director Christopher Wray Will Step Down Early January.
SO WE’LL HAVE TO MINE OUR OWN: China Begins Ban of Rare Earth Minerals to the US.
December 11, 2024
IT’S ONLY THE BEGINNING:
https://t.co/rSTm0jU9Gp pic.twitter.com/Sfa0HFQCS1
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) December 11, 2024
Helen has found something similar in the interviews she’s doing for her next book.
CONSCIOUSNESS OF GUILT: Bill Clinton: I’m Open to Discussing Preemptive Pardon for Hillary Before Trump Takes Office.
OPEN THREAD: Hump day.
YOU MIGHT ALMOST SAY IT’S MORNING IN AMERICA: My New York Post column: National mood shift since Trump’s win is reviving America’s lost vigor.
OLD AND BUSTED: Displaying anger towards the current president by putting stickers on gas pumps with rapidly rising fuel prices.
The New Hotness? Tagging your own car! For Tesla Owners, a Referendum Through Bumper Stickers.
The solution, for many Tesla owners on both ends of that spectrum, has been to slap a bumper sticker on their car to let people know how they feel about Mr. Musk.
Mr. Hiller, who lives in Honolulu and works at the Waikiki Aquarium, became a key player in the situation by being ahead of the curve thanks to his side business: an Etsy shop called Mad Puffer Stickers.
At first, Mr. Hiller just sold stickers with fish illustrations (e.g. an image of a clownfish with the caption “Don’t talk to me. I’m a fishtrovert”) on Etsy and Amazon. He had been considering buying a Tesla, but in early 2023, several months after Mr. Musk completed his takeover of Twitter, Mr. Hiller said he found himself alienated by what he characterized as misinformation on the site.
“So I’m like, there’s no way I’m buying a Tesla: I don’t want to give this guy a penny,” he said. “Then I started thinking, there’s got to be so many people who are just embarrassed, who have a Tesla already, and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, now I’m repping this guy. I don’t want to endorse anything this guy stands for.’”
That is when he added the new bumper sticker — “I Bought This Before We Knew Elon Was Crazy” — to his offerings, aiming to draw in left-leaning Tesla owners. Initially, he sold between five and 10 of the stickers a day. But as Mr. Musk became increasingly outspoken in his support of Mr. Trump, more orders started to flow in, with Mr. Hiller reporting he has sold around 18,000 of the stickers across 30 countries.
“It’s become a pretty good side business,” Mr. Hiller said.
In an era of out-of-control leftist violence and vandalism, the stickers also serve as the equivalent of those “No radio onboard” signs seen on cars parked on the streets of leftist urban hellscapes. The self-hating Tesla driver’s stickers have the goal of reminding the potential vandal that the owner of the car is as disappointed as he could be with the man who designed it (in-between designing spacecraft and overseeing global communications platforms).
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China set to launch first Guowang megaconstellation satellites on Long March 5B.
REPORT: Time magazine to name Trump 2024 Person of the Year.
Hitler is Time magazine’s Man of the Year — again!
HAHAHA:
It’s like Keith is in a competition with himself to be the worst person alive and every day he wins. https://t.co/Z9OuuXmwFO
— Karol Markowicz (@karol) December 11, 2024
THIS IS A BIG WIN FOR THE NEW CIVIL LIBERTIES ALLIANCE IN ITS CAMPAIGN TO REIN IN THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE: U.S. appeals court tosses Nasdaq diversity rules for company boards. “A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down the Nasdaq’s diversity disclosure rules for companies listed on the stock exchange, which were designed to boost the representation of women and minority directors on boards. The conservative-majority New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Securities and Exchange Commission did not have the power to approve the rule that required companies to ensure women and minority directors were on their boards or provide an explanation of why this was not the case.”
Reminder/disclosure: I’m on the NCLA’s board of advisors.
UPDATE: Here’s the NCLA press release, and here’s the full text of the opinion.
JAMES LILEKS’ WEDNESDAY REVIEW OF MODERN THOUGHT:
We should be done with the CEO murderer soon enough, until the trial. The fans will sift out the good things and valorize his acts and thoughts. A charismatic photo will be turned into a Che shirt. People on Twitter will be Very Angry about the American health care system for a while until they are Very Angry about something else. The people in the middle of the discourse will not that at least we’re starting to have a conversation about the health care system, insurance, and all that.
Two points:
- There is no placating the people who want the current system – for that matter, all the current systems to end and be replaced with Cornucopianism, a political philosophy I just made up. It means everyone gets everything in unstinting amounts as they need, because that is fair, and the only reason it’s not happening is greed and hatred.
- This is not the time to have that discussion at all. There is only one “discussion” that should follow a politically motivated murder, and that is the evil of politically motivated murder.
* * * * * * * *
Beware of any complaint that can be solved by Cornucopianism. When someone puts forth a complaint that strums the Aeolian Harp of general resentment about All the Things, look for Cornucopianism as the implied solution. If you see it, point it out, and laugh at it. Then find some adults with whom to talk.
The problem for the left is that they cannot direct their anger at the ultimate practitioner of Cornucopianism: Barack Obama broke US healthcare. Only the Left refuses to admit it. “It’s rich for progressives who have pushed for all of these developments – from guaranteed issue of policies to people with pre-existing conditions to mandates of what those policies cover – to now complain about increasing premiums and rising claim denial rates. What did they think would happen? So now, they are reduced to cheering for literally shooting the messenger.”
CRISES BY DESIGN: NYT: The Biden “Immigration Boom” Is the Biggest In This Country’s Almost 250-Year History; 60% of Recent “Newcomers” Entered Illegally.
It’s not just the story here that’s relevant — it’s who’s reporting it.
The NYT is basically providing what Obama used to call a “permission structure” for Democrats to abandon their quasi-religious open borders fanaticism and moderate on the issue.
And they’re only doing that because the issue is destroying the Democrat Cult. This is an intervention, telling the cultists to back off before the entire cult collapses.
And yet another example of the Times slow-walking news sufficiently so that it won’t harm a Democrat president, governor, or candidate.
FUNNY, I DON’T REMEMBER COLOSSUS OR SKYNET EVER CRASHING: ChatGPT down for users globally, OpenAI shares major update on technical outage.
UPDATE: Was it the Apple IOS 18.2 update that crashed ChatGPT, or something far more sinister?
WNBA’S CAITLIN CLARK WINS TIME’S ‘ATHLETE OF THE YEAR,’ PROMPTLY GOES WOKE:
My thought process on this is that while her comments are disappointing, Clark is still young and getting her sea legs in a league where the huge egos and the propensity for hurt feelings are just as dominant and prevailing as they are in any other professional sports league, where rings also have to be kissed.
Right now, she’s just trying to play ball and get away from being turned into the spectacle, and she’s saying what she thinks she needs to do in order to earn respect from people from whom she likely will never get it. As soon as she grows up a bit more and figures that out she’ll probably look back on these comments and cringe.
In any event, it’s just another reminder not to put sports icons too high up on pedestals because they are human, and it is inevitable that, at some point, they are bound to let you down.
As America’s Newspaper of Record reports:
ADVANCED KNAPPING THEN, STARSHIP NOW: A Major Leap Forward in Technology Took Place 900,000 Years Ago.
RFK, JR. TRIED TO WARN YOU: Startling Findings: High-Fructose Corn Syrup Linked to Cancer Growth.
#FREEJOEL: WHY DOES INSTAGRAM HATE DOGS? Well, at least one dog. A friend of ours has — well, had — an Instagram account for her French Bulldog, Joel, pictured below as a puppy and as a full-grown dog with Helen.
The account is an entirely harmless one involving pictures of Joel walking at the park, running along the beach, snoozing in front of a fireplace, etc. But somehow InstaGram decided that something in the account — they never tell you want — violates their rules and permanently banned it.
Her appeal was refused. No details were forthcoming.
There have been worse injustices on Meta’s platform, God knows, but this seems especially stupid. I’m thinking of petitioning the FTC to require social media to provide specific details on why they banned an account, what rules were broken, and whether they treat all accounts the same. Any FTC lawyers (which I am not) are encouraged to chime in.
#FREEJOEL!
FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN, THEN WE TAKE BERLIN: NFL announces first-ever regular season game in Berlin in 2025.
The NFL has announced it will play a regular season game in Berlin for the first time in 2025.
The game will be played at the iconic Olympic Stadium in the German capital.
The NFL has held regular season games in Munich and Frankfurt since 2022, with the game in Berlin set to mark the fifth NFL regular season game in Germany and the first in the German capital.
‘Germany has a rich tradition of American football, and the NFL has a deep history with the city of Berlin,’ said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
‘We first held a preseason game at the Olympic Stadium 34 years ago, before it was home to NFL Europe’s Berlin Thunder in the early 2000s.
‘Now, with almost 20 million NFL fans in Germany, we’ll make a historic return to the city playing a regular season game for the first time as we open the next chapter in our relationship with Berlin.’
Related: Why does the NFL keep exporting its worst games to Europe? Because it can. “The matchups that the NFL has inflicted on crowds in the United Kingdom and now Germany have almost always been putrid. There have been 42 NFL games in Europe since the NFL first brought its product overseas in October 2007. Of those, only two have pitted a pair of teams with winning records, a matchup between the Giants and Packers in 2022 and one between the Chiefs and Dolphins last season. Nine times, the NFL has subjected crowds in Europe to a game featuring at least one winless team. The 2017 Cleveland Browns made a London appearance on their way to becoming the second 0-16 team in NFL history, as did the legendarily bad Urban Meyer-coached Jaguars and a 15-loss Dolphins team quarterbacked by the immortal Cleo Lemon. It’s like introducing Italian American cuisine by opening up a can of SpaghettiOs. Or showcasing the best of American barbecue by serving a McRib.”
Couldn’t the NFL fix the onside kick and ban that weird new kickoff formation instead?
(Classical reference in headline.)
But not enough change.
