December 9, 2024

CHANGE: Is DEI doomed? “A second Trump administration is likely to be more motivated, better equipped and more focused on dismantling DEI initiatives on college campuses.”

Posted at 4:50 pm by Stephen Green

NOBODY LIKES A LOSER:

As far as I can tell, both Bidens avoided looking at Harris and Emhoff even when they turned in their direction.

Besides, Jill only has eyes for Donald.

Posted at 4:35 pm by Stephen Green

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Ohio bill would require high-demand liquor bottles to be opened when sold.

A bill introduced at the Ohio Statehouse would require high-demand liquor bottles to be opened and resealed at the time they are sold, in an attempt to combat an illegal secondary market.

Sen. Bill DeMora (D-Columbus) is a fan of bourbon and seeks out rare bottles. The state liquor agency sends out a notice when a limited supply of these highly sought-after bourbons, whiskies and other spirits such as tequila are made available for purchase at certain stores. DeMora and others wait in line for the chance to get a bottle.

“I’m just trying to look out for all the regular bourbon-lovers like myself,” DeMora said. “When I get notices of the bourbon I want, I stand in line. I’ve been successful twice. I’ve been unsuccessful a dozen times.”

The problem, DeMora said, is that people who he refers to as “flippers” quickly buy up the allocated bourbons and illegally resell them on a secondary market for significantly more than what they paid.

Here’s the real culprit, way down in the eighth graf: “In Ohio, liquor prices are fixed.”

Posted at 3:48 pm by Stephen Green

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 3:22 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THE CLOCK HAS STRUCK THIRTEEN TIMES. And now we’re seeing a preference cascade, as nobody wants to put up with the leftist bullying that’s obviously crazy.

Related:

Posted at 2:46 pm by Glenn Reynolds

JONATHAN TURLEY: Jake Tapper and CNN Lose Major Motions in Defamation Case by Navy Veteran.

We previously discussed the defamation lawsuit brought by Navy veteran Zachary Young against CNN and anchor Jake Tapper. Young has been doing well in court and last week he won on additional major issues against CNN. In a pair of orders, the jury will be allowed to award punitive damages and his experts would be allowed to be heard by the jury on the damages in the case. It also found that the Navy veteran was not a public figure and thus is not subject to the higher standard of proof associated with that status.

The punitive damages decision is particularly interesting legally. It could prove financially onerous for the struggling network, which has plunging ratings and has reduced staff.

The court found that CNN’s “retraction” was insufficient to remove punitive damages from the table.

Developing…

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green

JONATHAN TURLEY: “This is Not the Time for Balance:” LA Times Columnist Resigns in Protest . . . Over Balanced Commentary.

Last year, Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis delivered a truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom by telling the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

Litman has been one of the most unabashed lawfare warriors. Even when the Justice Department was seeking to dismiss the Flynn case, [liberal columnist and former prosecutor Harry] Lipman wrote an L.A. Times column advising Judge Emmet Sullivan how to “make trouble” for the administration. Litman admitted there is “very little leeway to reject the government’s decisions to dismiss charges” but encouraged Sullivan to “accomplish what Congress, multiple inspectors general, and a majority of the electorate have not been able to do — hold the president and his allies accountable for their contemptuous disregard for the rule of law.”

On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Litman declared to Nicolle Wallace that Trump’s victory is “an absolute five-alarm fire.” He called the effort to restore a diversity of viewpoints as little more than an attempt “to curry favor with Trump.” He then added:

“And I just think this is not a time for balance when you have someone who’s not telling the truth on the other side. And it’s a deep responsibility. And instead, I think they cowered and are worried about their personal holdings and just being threatened by Trump. And that’s a really shameful capitulation, I think. So, I just felt I couldn’t be a part of it and had to resign.”

It was a telling moment. Litman appeared on a network that has lost half of its viewership and is fighting for its existence in an effort by NBCUniversal to unload it. Readers are fleeing to new media after papers like the L.A. Times and the Washington Post literally wrote off half of the country. Yet, these figures would rather lose their jobs and media platforms than their bias.

To be fair, from global cooling/warming/climate change/climate chaos to gun control to abortion issues, it’s never “the right time for balance” when it comes to the legacy media, who would rather champion their pet leftist issues than attempt to keep their readers.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISSOLVE THE PEOPLE AND ELECT ANOTHER: A Coup Against Right Wing Movements Is Underway In Europe.

In Germany the establishment is attempting to ban the increasingly successful AfD Party on the grounds that they represent a “return to fascism”. Over 100 legislators backed the resolution, though it is unclear if a vote will be taken. The AfD is the second most popular party in Germany and has recently put a candidate forward for chancellor in the upcoming February elections.

All other political parties in Germany are variations of the progressive spectrum. Leftists say that if the AfD gains any significant governmental power they will refuse to work with them, preferring to leave the German government in a state of limbo rather than accept the will of the voters. It should be noted that Germany’s coalition government is already collapsing and the country is in crisis.

In France, the increasing success of Marine Le Pen and her National Rally Party has been met with extreme derision by the progressive elites. The establishment under Emmanuel Macron engaged in political chicanery after the National Rally won the first round of the French elections. The centrists established a coalition with the radical leftists as a way to prevent the right wing from taking power. The move was technically legal, but considered by many to be an immoral effort to deny conservative French voters a voice.

The elites are also attempting to use lawfare against Le Pen, conjuring charges of misuse of EU funds with the intent to ensure she can run in the 2026 elections. As in Germany, it should be noted that the very coalition that was put in place to keep the right wing out of government has now collapsed under a no confidence vote of Prime Minister Barnier and France is currently in crisis.

What the elites eventually seem to forget is that if they don’t accept peaceful losses by democratic means, eventually, they may lose in some much worse way.

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green

BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN DOCUMENTARY BE COMING TO IMAX IN FEBRUARY:

After many years of being in development, Led Zeppelin have announced their new documentary, Being Led Zeppelin, is set for release in February, 2025.

The film, directed by Bernard MacMahon, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2021 but didn’t receive a widespread release, as initially expected. Earlier this year, talk of the documentary was reignited when Sony Classics Pictures acquired the distribution rights for the production.

However, the cut of Becoming Led Zeppelin, which will arrive in cinemas, is slightly different to the version which aired at the Venice Film Festival three years ago.

The film promises to combine interviews with Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, as well as historic clips of John Bonham speaking, with concert footage of the band in 1969 at Fillmore West, the Atlanta Pop Festival and the Texas Pop Festival. It focuses on the early years of the band and their rise to becoming the most popular group on the planet rather than chronicling their entire career.

Becoming Led Zeppelin is set to be released in 200 IMAX theatres on February 7th, 2025. Additionally, before its general release, it will premiere in 18 cities on February 5th, 2025, for advanced screenings in select locations.

In a statement, Becoming Led Zeppelin writer and producer Allison McGourty explained why it was such a prolonged project to complete, stating, “We spent five years flying back and forth across the Atlantic scouring attics and basements in pursuit of rare and unseen film footage, photographs and music recordings.”

McGourty added: “Then we transferred each piece of media with custom techniques, so that in IMAX, these 55-year-old clips and music would look and sound like they came out of the lab yesterday.”

In the meantime: The Hammer of the Gods: The First Critical Biography of Led Zeppelin Finally Available on the Kindle.

My latest, on Stephen Davis’ somewhat infamous 1985 look at Zeppelin’s now infamous very much non-#metoo-approved debauchery, over at Ed Driscoll.com.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

COLBY COSH: The apocalypse that never was still haunts generation X.

How often have you heard or read the phrase “the End Times”? On Nov. 25, the evangelizing author Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth (1970), died at the age of 95. The world’s press took relatively little note of this, even though Planet Earth is sometimes said to have been the single best-selling non-fiction book of the 1970s. But even this surely understates the global cultural influence of Lindsey’s book. For many non-Christians, the variety of “dispensational premillennialism” he propagated just is their idea of Christianity, received secondhand from mass-media evangelists and religious pamphlets.

* * * * * * * * *

Funnily enough, Lindsey absolutely could not find a trace of the United States anywhere in the Bible, leading him to conclude that the U.S. was unlikely to participate in the last war, and was therefore certain to enter a precipitous decline in economic and strategic power — probably because of some sneaky Soviet attack.

That’s held up as well as most of his prophecies. Lindsey was vague about timelines, but certainly did not think in 1970 that there would be a year 1990. He was sure that the return of the Jews to Israel would be followed immediately by the demolition of the Dome of the Rock, which is still there in 2024, and the building of the Third Jewish Temple, which still ain’t.

The Late Great Planet Earth had a long series of ludicrous and inevitable sequels as the original prophecies passed their expiration date and had to be subtly revised. But while the Cold War was still in progress, millenarian feelings were inescapable, and Lindsey did as much as anyone to make them so. Our secular teachers were propagandizing us endlessly about the imminent end of the world even as our evangelical friends were living with the same expectation and more than happy to tell you all about it. There is a part of the generation X brain, religious or not, that wakes up in the morning in the year 2024 and subconsciously thinks, “Huh. It’s all still here.”

Related: Panicking over the planet and population is pointless.

One sign of moral panic is that when the facts change, the fears remain the same. In the 1970s, the Washington Post, TIME and Newsweek stoked fears of “a new ice age.” As soon as scientists updated their models to show a trend in the other direction, “global warming” became as threatening as global cooling. And when winters stubbornly kept happening and the direst predictions of new-age prophets like Al Gore failed to come to pass, the whole thing was rebranded as “climate change.”

Whatever the label, and whatever the underlying phenomenon was thought to be, the moral implication remained the same — human beings were ruining the earth and must curtail their comforts to save the planet. Bad weather used to be God’s punishment for human sinfulness. Now it’s nature’s punishment for capitalism. Men who foresee the future know this, and the only remedy is, of course, one that environmentalists, socialists and other anti-capitalists had already demanded before the crisis even was identified: larger government, more global government and increasing control over the economy and individuals’ lives.

Leftist intellectuals, frustrated by the failures of the Great Society and the coming of Richard Nixon became “Progressives Against Progress” in the late 1960s, and as our Newsweek link earlier today to the latest in an unending series of articles over the years picturing a world that’s on fire/frozen/underwater illustrates, they’ve never recovered since:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll