THE MOST SOCCER THING EVER! U.S., England tie World Cup match in Qatar, 0-0.
The highlight reel from the game is really something:
THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION PROMISED US WE’D BE LOVED ONCE TRUMP WAS GONE: China and Russia creeping further into West as major Latin American nations reject the US.
THIS SHOULD BE FUN: Judges at the Center of Yale Law Clerkship Boycott Will Speak at Yale Next Week.
Every time I hear about the tragedy (the tragedies) suffered by the Indians of North America (whether at Thanksgiving or at any other time), I bring up some variant of the following questions:
Do the calamities also include the theft of the lands of the Apaches? Does the genocide, real or alleged, of the Native Americans also concern the extermination of the Huron tribe (Huronia)?This type of question usually boondoggles the leftist, whose eyes grow like saucers and who waffles trying to reply, since in his eagerness to sum up American and world history by meting out simplified explanations in one-sentence platitudes (that conveniently, and invariably, happen to be damning towards Americans, i.e., white Americans), he has neither had nor taken the time to think any details through as he attempts to display his alleged expertise as a modern-day genius.
The problem, of course, is that the lands of the Apaches were stolen by the Comanches.
While the Hurons were wiped out by the Iroquois.
Or, as Allan W Eckert put it regarding another neighboring tribe of the Iroquois (aka the League of the Six Nations of the Iroquois), this one from northwesternmost Pennsylvania, “the Six Nations annihilated [the Erighs or the Eries] — every man, woman, and child being slain, the tribe was wiped out of existence.”
But apart from that — apart from those tiny and utterly inconsequential details that we can posthaste proceed to forget and ignore — it is surely indisputable to posit that all “Native Americans” are, and were, spiritual peacemakers in harmony with nature and with the Earth, as well as something akin to Tibet’s Buddhist monks. (And with that said, let’s turn off the sarcasm faucet…)
The romance of the “noble savage” is just another lie upscale white people tell themselves so they can enjoy a delicious frisson of guilt. And then use that “guilt” to justify oppressing less-upscale white people.
CYBER MONDAY DEALS are here. #CommissionEarned
“WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE…:” Kanye’s Thanksgiving feast with Trump, Milo and Nick Fuentes.
While you were carving the turkey with your family last night, Kanye West was on Twitter, unveiling his 2024 masterplan.
On Thanksgiving night, the rapper posted a video titled “Mar-a-Lago debrief,” in which he said Donald Trump was “really impressed with Nick Fuentes.” That would be the same Nick Fuentes who heads up the far-right incel-adjacent “groyper” movement, attended both the Charlottesville and January 6 protests (he was on the steps of the Capitol) and has spoken critically about the notion that America is a “Judeo-Christian” nation.
Also, like Milo Yiannopoulos, he’s now working on the Kanye 2024 campaign. With friends like these…
As Ed Morrissey writes, linking to Breitbart.com’s take on Trump’s Thanksgiving dinner with the toxic trio, “Here’s the big question: Will Republicans want to spend the next couple of years attempting to explain this away, or will they just prefer to opt for a candidate with better judgment? Breitbart is asking that question now, at least implicitly.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Jeffrey Carter: ESG Investing is a Fraud.
My last blog was about webs and how fraudsters and government use them. They wind up trapping themselves. In the case of government, they can keep the web going even though nothing works because they can issue debt.
In private industry, the fraud breaks down. See FTX.
I remember being in an MBA class at Chicago Booth talking about Enron. One student said, “They sure made a lot of money”. The professor said, “But they went to jail.” The student said, “But they made money.” The professor forcefully said, “They went to jail.”
Or, if you are Jon Corzine you managed to stay out of prison. Others weren’t so lucky.
Sometimes, the government will change policy to enable fraudsters. Democratic Congressman Barnie Frank rewriting loan policy for homes allowed the whole house of cards to be built that tanked housing values and the economy in 2008. It also caused the government to go deeper into debt and changed banking regulations so that they were more slanted against smaller individuals and a positive for big corporates. Changing the definition of the word vaccine has enabled the fraudsters to distribute a Covid vaccine that doesn’t actually work. But they made millions so what?
Wake me up when the elite credentialed suits go to jail.
Let me put it in plain English. ESG investing is a fraud. It doesn’t take into account regular financial metrics. Paraphrasing hedge fund manager and PhD economist Cliff Asness; he put it gently in his paper on ESG when he said, “investors will accept less return in return for doing good.”
Like most lefty scams, it’s about avoiding accountability when you fail to produce promised results. Profits are measurable. “Doing good” is not. Thus the latter is a preferable metric for people in charge of institutions.
November 25, 2022
WELL: ‘Wild West’: New Emails Reveal Fauci, NIH Officials Considered Warning FBI About Potential Lab Leak. “Fauci, the outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has downplayed the possibility that COVID-19 originated in a lab setting in Wuhan, China, and has generally denied any wrongdoing or miscalculation in funding dangerous gain-of-function (GoF) research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). New emails from early 2020 obtained via the Freedom of Information Act by reporter Jimmy Tobias show Fauci was deeply concerned about the possibility of a lab leak at the time.”
I imagine he remained just as concerned later, but was more concerned about keeping things covered up.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The next and most profound industrial revolution in human history is underway in Low Earth Orbit. “The most profound chapter in human history is the industrial revolution happening in LEO, just 250 miles above our heads. We are at a turning point for our civilization, pivoting from 60 years of space exploration to a new era of unprecedented economic activity, manufacturing and growth in space. This burgeoning epoch is called the Orbital Age, and it will drive a new trillion-dollar industry.”
BLACK FRIDAY DEALS are here. #CommissionEarned
IT COULD BE WORSE, HE COULD BE CARRYING A COPY OF THE TIMES: The New York Times Has Ideas on How to Handle a Guest Who Wants to Carry a Gun to Thanksgiving Dinner.
WHY, INDEED: Why Choose A Double Action Only Pistol?
READER FAVORITE: Legendary Whitetails Men’s Maplewood Hooded Shirt Jacket. #CommissionEarned
SBF DROPS THE MASK: FTX CEO Mocked Gullible Media for Hyping His ‘Effective Altruism’ Shtick.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: NASA scientist: humans will live and work on the moon by 2030.
Related: Elon Blows Apart Liberal Myth on Ferguson, Makes It Even Better With Big Vow for Twitter.
More: Let the credits roll:
I wrote about Matt Ofalea’s brilliant four-and-a-half minute video below in “The playbook on the laptop.” The video compiles clips — mostly of news anchors and reporters — opining on air with mind-numbing certainty and Hive-like unanimity that the New York Post’s reportage on Hunter Biden’s laptop was “a lie,” “altered or fake,” “pure distractions,” and of course, “RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION.” I have posted the video once again below.
NOT ENTIRELY SURPRISING: Adults with severe asthma may face higher risk of heart attack, stroke.
MICROBIOME NEWS: Study sheds new light on the link between oral bacteria and diseases. “Previous studies have demonstrated clear links between oral health and common diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. However, there have been few longitudinal studies identifying which bacteria occur in infected oral- and maxillofacial regions. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now analyzed samples collected between 2010 and 2020 at the Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden from patients with severe oral infections and produced a list of the most common bacteria.”
Hubris: Robert Reich has never started or run a business of any significance. As a pundit, he hasn’t even generated workable policy proposals. He can’t even use an apostrophe correctly in a tweet. Elon Musk, on the other hand, is the greatest entrepreneur of our time. And he notices things:
Only some employees create value. Others actively destroy value. The ones that listen to Robert Reich are probably in the latter category.
DISGRACED IDW FIGURE SAM HARRIS DELETES HIS TWITTER ACCOUNT: “On Thursday, prominent atheist and disgraced member of the Intellectual Dark Web Sam Harris deleted his Twitter account. The move comes after the Waking Up podcast host was slammed for stating that he hated Trump to such an extent that he wouldn’t have cared if Hunter Biden ‘had the corpses of children in his basement’ in the lead up to the 2020 election.”
ALL QUIET ON THE NETFLIX FRONT: My review of the new German remake of the 1930 Lewis Milestone movie adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic anti-war novel.
CHANGE: Elon Drops Some Big Consequences on Leftist Twitter Accounts That Break the Rules.
We saw Musk discover the hard evidence of the leftist “woke” nature of Twitter when he found the pile of “stay woke” t-shirts in the closet and blew up the liberal myth about the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson. He said how that leftist bent had distorted world conversations “has been really bad. Far left San Francisco/Berkeley views have been propagated to the world via Twitter.” He committed that there would no longer be a “thumb on the scale” to promote such a leftist narrative any more.
Musk also noted that it was conservatives who suffered the brunt of the permanent suspensions, that that wasn’t happening to people on the left before he took over.
One piece of evidence of that was that if people on the left made threats they now were suffering consequences when they might not have before.
Can’t imagine why Antifa was given a pass during the Jack Dorsey days: Antifa protester among those who lost job in Musk’s massive Twitter layoffs.
BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: ASUS VivoBook Flip 14 Thin and Light 2-in-1 Laptop. #CommissionEarned
WIDOWED JAPANESE MEN learning to perform basic household tasks. “Those who lose a spouse often find themselves unable to do the most rudimentary chores. An old Japanese saying — ‘Danshi-chubo-ni-hairazu,’ or ‘men should be ashamed to be found in the kitchen’ — has spooked husbands from most any housework. Even those who wanted to help typically lacked the know-how.”
In the words of Robert Heinlein: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:
MORE TROUBLES AT THE UALR LAW SCHOOL: Professor revises complaint against Little Rock law school’s dean.
TRYING TO KEEP CLASSROOMS SAFE AND ORDERLY IS RACIST: There really are Biden Administration officials who think that. It’s modern progressive gospel. We really are in a mess. I just wish I had better news.
TECHNOCRACY AND TOTALITARIANISM GO TOGETHER: Biden’s not-so-subtle lurch toward dictatorship.
AT AMAZON, Black Friday Deals are live. #CommissionEarned.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Remarkable pivot happening in the national security space business. “Over the last year, policymakers in Washington have awakened from a deep slumber. The abrupt ending of the Cold War in the 1980’s and the subsequent misguided industry consolidation in the 90’s lulled the nation into believing that the status quo was all we could really hope for. Very little innovation or improvements were envisioned or deemed necessary. Parts obsolescence was seen as the most existential threat. But that’s all changed.”
HMM: Roman Coins Once Thought to Be Fake Reveal a Long Lost Historical Figure. “Long dismissed as forgeries, a handful of ancient Roman coins uncovered in Transylvania more than three centuries ago have been authenticated by a new analysis. It’s not hard to see why the coins – dated to the 260s CE – might have been considered fakes. Where most ancient coinage displays the head of an emperor, one of the artifacts displays a mysterious figure not portrayed in any other known record. . . . While he may not have ruled over the entirety of Rome, Sponsian appears to have fashioned his own little empire in a remote gold mining outpost, complete with a crudely minted currency using metals from local mines, probably after the Roman Empire had started to become fractured, the researchers suspect.”
HMM: Study says the heaviest flying bird seems to self-medicate with plants. “The great bustard actively seeks out medicinal plants that can kill pathogens, according to a study published Wednesday in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. The study published in the journal Frontiers suggests the large bird could be a rare example of birds that use plants to self-medicate.”
LIVE BLACK FRIDAY DEALS are here. #CommissionEarned
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: WHO says measles poses imminent threat as vaccine rates dip. “Nearly 40 million children missed a measles vaccine dose last year, the WHO said in a report issued Wednesday, calling the situation a ‘significant setback in global progress towards achieving and maintaining measles elimination.’ . . . Coverage has steadily declined since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic while surveillance of the disease has weakened in many areas, according to the WHO. Vaccination programs have also been interrupted repeatedly as health officials prioritize COVID-19.”
Semafor, which was launched by former NYT columnist and Buzzfeed’s chief Ben Smith, accused Musk of taking funds from Bankman-Fried to finance his purchase of Twitter.
The publication insinuated that Musk took $100 million in funding from Bankman-Fried, who is accused of misappropriating funds from his crypto venture FTX to a sister company called Alameda in a Ponzi scheme to rival that of disgraced financier Bernie Madoff’s.
Musk fired back at Semafor after it published the piece titled “Sam Bankman-Fried, Elon Musk, and a secret text,” which was penned by Liz Hoffman. The story accuses Musk, who now owns Twitter, of “gleefully” mocking the “downfall” of FTX.
The article was published after Musk claimed Bankman-Fried set off his “bullsh*t meter” when he offered to invest in Musk’s takeover over the social media platform. The article strongly implies that Musk had taken Bankman-Fried’s money.
Semafor’s lead investor appears to be none other than SBF — a fact that Musk was quick to point out in his public rebuke of the publication, with receipts to prove it.
“Semafor is owned by SBF,” wrote Musk. “This is a massive conflict of interest in your reporting. Journalistic integrity is [garbage bin emoji].”
I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN THE IDEA OF FIGHTING COVID WITH VITAMIN D WAS CONSPIRACY THEORY/MISINFORMATION/FAKE SCIENCE. NOW IT’S IN NATURE: Association between vitamin D supplementation and COVID-19 infection and mortality.
Vitamin D deficiency has long been associated with reduced immune function that can lead to viral infection. Several studies have shown that Vitamin D deficiency is associated with increases the risk of infection with COVID-19. However, it is unknown if treatment with Vitamin D can reduce the associated risk of COVID-19 infection, which is the focus of this study. In the population of US veterans, we show that Vitamin D2 and D3 fills were associated with reductions in COVID-19 infection of 28% and 20%, respectively [(D3 Hazard Ratio (HR) = 0.80, [95% CI 0.77, 0.83]), D2 HR = 0.72, [95% CI 0.65, 0.79]]. Mortality within 30-days of COVID-19 infection was similarly 33% lower with Vitamin D3 and 25% lower with D2 (D3 HR = 0.67, [95% CI 0.59, 0.75]; D2 HR = 0.75, [95% CI 0.55, 1.04]). We also find that after controlling for vitamin D blood levels, veterans receiving higher dosages of Vitamin D obtained greater benefits from supplementation than veterans receiving lower dosages. Veterans with Vitamin D blood levels between 0 and 19 ng/ml exhibited the largest decrease in COVID-19 infection following supplementation. Black veterans received greater associated COVID-19 risk reductions with supplementation than White veterans. As a safe, widely available, and affordable treatment, Vitamin D may help to reduce the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Do tell.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Turkeys Away! Dems Drop Cheney Like WKRP.
It can’t be Thanksgiving without the classic 1978 clip from the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati, in which the radio station hired a helicopter that dropped live turkeys. Chaos ensued when the birds hit the ground below “like sacks of wet cement.” It’s one of the most hilarious clips from 70’s TV — or from any decade, for that matter.
And now, because of some disgruntled Dems, Liz Cheney may meet the same fate as those turkeys: dropped from their favor because of her obsession with Donald Trump. They also suspect her of using the January 6 committee — of which she was one of two Republicans — as a stepping stone to her political future.
Which, of course, is toast anyway, but Liz doesn’t yet believe that.
According to the Washington Post, fifteen anonymous staffers are miffed that the committee may be deep-sixing the information they had brought to the table. Their work, part of the “Blue Team,” focused on law enforcement and how it failed to assess the predicted attack on the Capitol. Other groups, like the Green Team and the Purple Team, examined financing for the January 6 event, along with militia groups and extremism.
But that’s all taking a back seat because of Liz Cheney’s fixation on Trump. Even the name of her group provides a clue: it’s the “Gold Team.”
One former staff member said:
“We all came from prestigious jobs, dropping what we were doing because we were told this would be an important fact-finding investigation that would inform the public. But when [the committee] became a Cheney 2024 campaign, many of us became discouraged.”
Live look at the leftist autophagy, already in progress:
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS NO ONE IS ASKING: How To Talk To Family Members About Bitcoin This Thanksgiving.
BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: iRobot Roomba i3+ EVO (3550) Self-Emptying Robot Vacuum. #CommissionEarned
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Bill Maher Mourns Losing ‘Germophobe’ Howard Stern as a Friend.
Maher and Harris spoke extensively about COVID-19, from various treatments to how Americans settled into distinct camps over the virus.
“I hate the way it’s dividing people,” Maher began. “Climate change never divided people for real in my life.” He segued to the so-called King of All Media, a figure whose pandemic fears proved paralyzing.
“Howard Stern and I … for years there was animosity. We got back together like two lost lovers,” Maher said with a smile. “And we had just repaired this relationship and were having this beautiful friendship. Now, I think I’ll never see him again.”
“I still love him and I hope he still loves me, but he is, in my view, a germophobe. I think he would admit [it], it’s pretty obvious,” Maher continues. “People have the right to be whatever level of scared they are of germs. I can’t live in that world. I don’t want to … I can’t live in your paranoid world.”
Flashback: What Happened to Howard Stern?
Listening to this balderdash, you’d have thought that Clinton had led a saintly life, that she had been constantly set upon by jealous, corrupt inferiors, and that her career had been a spotless series of legislative and diplomatic triumphs. Buying into the notion of Hillary as a lifelong victim of the patriarchy, Stern seemed to be out to make up, in one interview, for every time he’d ever gotten a stripper to remove her top. One illuminating moment came when Stern praised Howard Zinn, the Communist author of A People’s History of the United States, a shoddy work of propaganda that has, alas, become a perennial best-seller and college text. Every Stern fan knows that Howard’s not big on books, so if he’s actually read Zinn’s opus, it’s likely his chief source of information on American history—a scary thought.
It was a stunning listening experience. When Hillary blamed James Comey (along with “the Russians and Wikileaks”) for her election loss, Stern went along with her, even though Comey had done Hillary a service by choosing not to prosecute her for clear violations of the Espionage Act. When she mentioned her emails, Stern didn’t bring up her private server or her destruction of the emails with BleachBit but instead agreed readily with her baffling claim that the emails had been “misinterpret[ed]”; when she criticized Trump’s “trade battles” and tax breaks, said that Trump was in Putin’s “camp,” and accused Trump fans (and not Antifa) of committing acts of violence around the country—and when she even knocked the booming Trump economy—Stern nodded along. He made no mention of Fusion GPS, the Clinton Foundation, her contorted version of the Benghazi episode, her dubious story about coming under fire in Bosnia, or anything else remotely scandalous in her (or her husband’s) past. Both Hillary and Stern took Joe Biden’s side in the Ukraine controversy and agreed that Trump’s famous phone call with the Ukrainian president had amounted to an “abuse of power.”
The entire interview was a case of kowtowing on an epic scale. Howard Stern, who rose to fame, in considerable part, by zapping fraudulent politicians, had now given one of the most sycophantic interviews of all time to a woman regarded by many as the most duplicitous pol of our era. It was a terrible comedown for a guy who’d earned a reputation for fearless honesty.
As Stephen Kruiser wrote at the start of year: Howard Stern Is Now Your Grandmother. “I wasn’t a radio guy but there was a time in the early ’90s when I set my alarm to listen to Howard Stern. He was that good. He was crass. He was insightful. Most importantly — for me — he was funny. He was also beyond edgy. Now he’s a bitchy, housecoat-wearing granny.”
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Again: Judge Blocks New York’s Private Property Gun Ban.
READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation). #CommissionEarned
I’LL TAKE “TO STOP SMALLER COMPETITORS FROM BEING ABLE TO PLAY” FOR $500, ALEX: Why Sam Bankman-Fried wanted crypto regulation.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: DARPA’s flying forward with its jetpack program.
AT AMAZON, Early Black Friday Deals. #CommissionEarned.
NIALL FERGUSON: FTX Kept Your Crypto in a Crypt Not a Vault.
Sam Bankman-Fried doesn’t read books. As he explained in a profile on Sequoia Capital’s website (which will be an assigned text in journalism courses for the rest of time), “I would never read a book.” “I’m very skeptical of books,” he said. “I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that.”
This error is not irremediable, because Bankman-Fried, founder of the now-defunct crypto exchange FTX, is likely soon to have a lot of time for reading.
* * * * * * * *
There is nothing in this story that would surprise the ghost of John Law, the Scottish financier who blew up the Mississippi Bubble in early 18th-century France. Bubbles are nearly always inflated with cheap credit. When monetary conditions tighten, the most leveraged players go down first, but the result is a cascade of illiquidity, which then turns into insolvency as asset prices plunge.
Another classic feature of the FTX story is the role of shady political influence. Just as Law ingratiated himself with the Duke of Orleans, the regent during the minority of Louis XV, so financial fraudsters through the ages have relied on friends in high places to protect them from legal or regulatory scrutiny.
Take Enron, the energy trading company that filed for bankruptcy in December 2001. Ken Lay, its chief executive, could not have inflated his castle in the air without Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s monetary policy “put,” but Enron also bought itself protection with roughly $6 million of political donations, a third of which went to Republicans. In addition, the company sought to buy itself popularity by paying the Houston Astros to rename their ballpark Enron Field.
Sound familiar? In 2020, Bankman-Fried gave the Joe Biden campaign at least $10 million. In the 2022 midterm election cycle, he was the second-largest funder of Democrats, after George Soros, giving $39.8 million in federal contributions. The majority of those donations, about $27 million, went to the Protect Our Future PAC, which supported candidates who prioritized pandemic prevention.
Not all bubble-blowers present themselves as philosopher kings. Law did; Lay not so much. As the son of two law school professors, SBF was exceptionally well prepared for self-aggrandizement. The Sequoia profile is full of gems:
Q: You just happen to be alive in the most important time in the history of the future race. The existential point! Really?
SBF: It certainly would not be one’s prior — at least, not naively. But if you want to really needle on that, there are some anthropic considerations by which that might not be as crazy as it sounds.
When a young man sets out make billions of dollars very quickly, there is a common suspicion that he is actuated by greed. By raising him as a doctrinaire utilitarian, professors Bankman and Fried provided their son with the perfect alibi: He was making the money purely in order to engage in “effective altruism,” the get-rich-quick version of utilitarianism. Because you can only do the greatest good for the greatest number if you first make the greatest amount of money.
If, like SBF, you’re not a fan of book learnin’, the Internet’s preeminent online bookseller has you covered: Amazon’s already greenlit an FTX miniseries.
WHEN THEY TELL YOU WHO THEY ARE, BELIEVE THEM: World Economic Forum chair Klaus Schwab declares on Chinese state TV: ‘China is a model for many nations.’
STEPHEN KRUISER: Annoy a Commie—Enjoy Everything About Thanksgiving Day.
LEFTIES ALWAYS TURN ON YOU: Jan 6 staffers turn on Liz Cheney. “What can you say at this point except maybe who did you think these people were?”
BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: Invicta Men’s 8926OB Pro Diver watch. #CommissionEarned
BUT SHE’LL SCREAM “SEXISM!” AND “ASSAULT” IF THEY CHUCK THEM BACK: University employee says she will chuck ‘dodge balls at cis men’s heads.’
Why is higher education such a cesspit of hate and sexism?
SOD OFF, SWAMPY: Astrobiologists concerned about imperialistic consequences of galactic exploration. “Rooted in DEI ideology and an anti-colonialist framework, much of this activism is carried out in the popular press among well-credentialed academics who emphasize the supposed need to rethink the language of their fields and make vocal exhortations to decolonize space.”
Colonize space. Leave the morons on Earth. And to be clear, these people are morons.
WINNING WITHOUT A MAJORITY WAS WHY THEY INTRODUCED RANKED-CHOICE VOTING: GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola won reelection Wednesday over two challengers backed by former President Donald Trump, thanks to the state’s ranked-choice-voting system, which allowed them to prevail without winning a majority of the vote.
ICYMI, WHEN NARRATIVES FAIL: Colorado Club Shooter is Non-Binary, Uses They/Them Pronouns, and Addressed as ‘Mx.’
This happens over and over, and yet every time the press rushes to blame somebody on the right. To be fair, that’s because the press is largely made up of garbage people who cheerfully operate as partisan hacks.
HMM: Georgia’s Six-Week Abortion Ban Reinstated by State Supreme Court.
The Georgia Supreme Court allowed the state’s ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy to once again take effect, reversing a lower court’s ruling that blocked enforcement of the 2019 law last week.
The justices on Wednesday granted a request for an emergency order brought by the state’s attorney general’s office. The state had quickly appealed the decision of Judge Robert McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County that allowed clinics in the state to resume appointments after six weeks of pregnancy.
Judge McBurney’s ruling on Nov. 15 permanently blocked enforcement of the state’s six-week abortion ban, finding the 2019 law was clearly unlawful at the time the state legislature passed it.
In his order, Judge McBurney said there has been a sea change in abortion law following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended federal constitutional protections for the procedure. He didn’t rule on whether an abortion ban passed in the future would violate the state’s constitution, noting that the legislature could revisit the issue and pass a new law. . . .
About a dozen states have enforced bans on nearly all abortions in the months since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. The legal battles that followed have created an uncertain and shifting landscape for abortion providers and patients in some places, prompting some clinics to open and close their doors more than once.
State courts continue to consider whether state constitutions protect the right to an abortion, an argument abortion-rights groups have made in their challenges to the bans. Lawmakers in a handful of states, meanwhile, are wrestling with whether and to what to extent to regulate abortion.
This is a plausible issue in Georgia, whose state Supreme Court has interpreted the Georgia Constitution in ways that have gone beyond the Federal Constitutions right to privacy.
Related: Kansas judge blocks state law to ban prescribing abortion drugs via telemedicine.
STANDING AGAINST THE TIDE: Chicago And (Maybe) Cornell Are First Elite Law Schools To Refuse To Join U.S. News Rankings Boycott.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Sorry kids, 81% of parents cutting Christmas spending. “Looking ahead to the upcoming Christmas season, nearly 7-in-10 registered voters are expecting to cut back on Christmas shopping this year, and 81% of parents with children under 18 are cutting back due to the increase in prices from last year.”
Related: Biden Kills Thanksgiving: 1 In 4 Families Can’t Afford Holiday.
Why, it’s as if: Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.
PROGRESSIVE HOLD ON YOUNG WEAKENING? The Washington Stand’s Dan Hart reports on data Charlie Kirk cited from a new Morning Consult survey showing a double-digit drop in support for progressive candidates among the 18-34 year old segment of the electorate in the past five years. Happy Thanksgiving!
CRISIS BY DESIGN: Emergency Oil Reserves Fall to Lowest Level Since 1984.
JULIETTE OCHIENG: On Ridicule. “When people laugh derisively at something you say – and tell you that this is what they are doing – they do it with the assumption that this type of laughter will wound you in some way. But what happens if this has no effect on you?”
BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: Winter Work Leather Gloves,Mechanics Gloves. #CommissionEarned
THIS AIN’T THE BEST OF THANKSGIVINGS FOR THE REPUBLIC: And Yet Thankful.
ROGER KIMBALL: The Chablis complex: The wine is renowned for its consistency, intricacy and near-immortality.
Chablis has the paradoxical distinction of being at once one of the most famous and least well known of French wines. Hugh Johnson opined that it is “one of the world’s most under-estimated treasures.” I agree.
We say that Chablis is Burgundy, but, situated on the Serein River some 100 miles southeast of Paris, Chablis is nearly 100 miles north of Beaune. Perhaps we can say that it is the Hadrian’s Wall of Burgundy. Hadrian’s bit of Britain was part of the Roman Empire, but no one would confuse it with Rome. . . .
Like its famous cousins down south, Chablis is 100 percent Chardonnay, but a hardy variety called “Beaunois,” “from Beaune.” “Chardonnay,” one wine writer observes, “responds to its cold terroir of limestone clay with flavors no one can reproduce in easier… wine-growing conditions — quite different, even from those of the rest of Burgundy to the south.” Indeed. No one would ever mistake a Chablis for, say, a Montrachet or Corton-Charlemagne. Less butter, more flint. But that is just a start.
Chablis is renowned for its consistency. Its wines can be divided into four types. At the lower end of price, richness and complexity are Petit Chablis and Chablis, of which there is a great abundance.
Then there are about eighty climats designated “Premier Cru,” of which my favorite is Fourchaume, bottled by several vintners. Where I live, these can be had for about $35-$70 and are fresh, citrusy and slightly floral. Remember those fossilized oyster shells? A dozen of their descendants will go nicely for lunch with a bottle (or two if you have company).
More select are the seven Grand Cru wines, which account for only about 1 percent of the wine produced in Chablis.
Yum.
OH, EXPERTS WEIGH IN! Mystery of sheep walking in circle for 12 days may be solved.
THEY CAN ALSO INDUCE HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE IN THOSE LIVING WITH THEM: Neurotic people may be suffering from this deadly condition.
ONLY HATE-FILLED RIGHT-WINGERS WOULD THINK JOE BIDEN (OR HIS FAMILY) PROFITED FROM THIS USE OF GOVERNMENT RESOURCES: Biden banned all press from Hunter’s daughter’s wedding — except Vogue. How much did it cost?
Or…. you know… thinking human beings.
IF ONLY THERE WERE A GOVERNMENT AGENCY TASKED WITH ANTICIPATING AND PREPARING FOR THESE EPIDEMICS: US faces shortages of children’s antibiotics and flu drugs amid ‘tripledemic’.
THE NEW COOL RACISM, NOT LIKE THE OLD RACISM: San Fran’s election director fired because he’s white.
WELL, JOE IS DEMENTED, AND WHY ARE WE TRYING TO MAKE A DEAL WITH GENOCIDAL LUNATICS? Iranian Supreme Leader Mocks Biden As Demented As Nuclear Deal Negotiations Stall.
WHAT’S THE OVER-UNDER ON HOW FAST THIS GETS SWEPT UNDER THE RUG? Suspect In Colorado Springs Shooting Claims To Be ‘Non-Binary,’ Uses ‘They/Them’ Pronouns.
BECAUSE ZHOU BI DEN IS VICE-ROI FOR HIS SERENE MAJESTY WINNIE THE XI: Why Are We Allowing Dangerous Chinese Tech Companies To Operate On American Soil?
Now ask me a tough one.
NO. IT’S JUST THE PLACE THE FRAUD WAS MOST OBVIOUS: Maricopa County Made Arizona’s Elections Even More Of A Disaster Than People Realize.
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